Dark Alchemy

by Laura Bickle

  She turned on the radio, hoping to hear some snippet of the voice she’d heard the night before, but she only caught fragments of weather reports and country music. A pang of disappointment lanced through her chest, but she left the music on, hoping.

  The Bronco’s engine growled as the altitude increased. The Lamar River wound up and around the road, alternating from the right to left side as she crossed bridges. Moose waded in the cool water up to their necks. Bison wandered in fields burned golden by summer’s heat and spangled with purple lupin flowers. She could imagine that this place had truly been untouched for centuries, that it had shaken off all efforts at human habitation.

  She followed the road signs to the Tower Yellowstone cluster of buildings. She passed the lodge that Mike had spoken of, a charming log and stone building with a gravel lot half-­full of vehicles. For a moment, she thought longingly of a full-­sized bathtub and bed linens that didn’t smell like stale tobacco, but she was certain that coyotes were not allowed. And it did have the distinct disadvantage of being located across the road from the Tower Ranger Station. She pulled into the parking lot beside Mike’s Jeep and rolled the windows of the Bronco halfway up.

  “Stay here,” she told Sig. She had visions of getting charged with poaching by some less friendly ranger than Mike.

  Sig lay down on the seat and yawned. It seemed that he might behave. Maybe.

  Mike was waiting for her at the door, with two cups of coffee in hand. He handed one to Petra. “Good morning, sunshine. Just saw you roll up.”

  “Thank you.” Petra slurped the coffee greedily.

  “Sleep well?”

  “Not so much.”

  “I saw your handiwork around town. Nice wallpapering job with those flyers, but that’s not a good way to attract attention. Now every nut job in the county has your phone number.”

  “Yeah, well. That’s the least of my problems.” She made a face. She didn’t want to tell him, but she had to. “Some idiots broke into my trailer yesterday while I was gone.”

  Mike’s brows shot up. “What happened? Why didn’t you call? What did you see?”

  She took a deep breath and told him what she knew. Mike listened with narrowed eyes, one hand hooked in his gun belt as she described the damage.

  “Nothing was taken,” she said. “I think it’s gotta be those tweaker kids. Hopefully, since they didn’t get anything, they won’t be back.”

  “Maybe. But they seem awfully fixated on you. I’ll call the sheriff this morning to get some paper on this. I don’t think they’ll do much. However . . .”

  Petra suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Here it came.

  “ . . . You should stay at the lodge,” he said.

  “The lodge doesn’t take coyotes.” She wasn’t going to abandon Sig for the sake of convenience.

  “You can stay with me.”

  “I appreciate it, but I can’t.” She couldn’t, for a whole helluva lot of reasons.

  “Look, you’re lucky, but luck’s only gonna get you so far around here.”

  “I’ll call Maria, okay?”

  Mike’s chin lifted. “That would be an acceptable compromise.”

  Petra nodded.

  “C’mon. I’ll show you what the USGS sent for you.” He gestured for her to follow him inside the station. “They shipped you a whole load of stuff.”

  A long counter held informational pamphlets and forms for fishing and camping permits. The building smelled the way most old buildings did to Petra: like earth and dust. Mike led her to a back room filled with radios and weather monitoring equipment. Tucked in the corner were two large wooden crates with Petra’s name on the manifest.

  “Presents from Uncle Sam.” Mike sipped the dregs of his coffee. “Want a crowbar?”

  “Please.”

  Petra worked the lid of the first box open. Inside, she found a file folder with instructions. Nothing exciting. Her assignment was to take soil samples from Specimen Ridge and the surrounding areas. The majority of the contents of the box were plastic vials and forms to attach to them, plus return postage cardboard boxes and packing materials. But USGS had seen fit to give her a few additional tools: maps, a bucket augur, a GPS-­based Azimuth pointing device to record exact information about the soil samples, sample bags, a compass, rock pick, altimeter, a soil sampling equipment kit in a case, microscope, binoculars, hand lenses, and a stereoscope. She’d brought many of her own tools with her, including the lenses, picks, rock climbing gear, and compass. But the USGS items were shiny new, and she looked forward to playing with them.

  The second box was filled with packing peanuts. Petra scooped as many of them aside as she could, but static electricity stuck them to her shirt. She dug until Mike turned the box over on its side, spilling the peanuts out on the floor. She dragged out a red metal device with wheels and a handle.

  “What’s that? Looks like a lawn mower.”

  Petra grinned. “It’s a ground penetrating radar device. It allows me to study bedrock without disturbing soils or rock layers.” She paged through the instruction manual that came with it, showing him fuzzy pictures of stripes. “This stuff is used from everything to finding lost utility lines to land mine detection and archaeology.”

  “Cool.” Mike squinted at the striped drawing. “How deep does it go?”

  “Depends on the soil composition, clay properties, and conductivity. Could be as little as one meter for really opaque soils to more than five thousand for clear ice. The average is about thirty meters under normal conditions, though.” Petra grinned. She couldn’t wait to use the new gadget; she hadn’t handled one since grad school.

  “You can leave as much stuff as you want here,” Mike said. “I can’t imagine that you’re gonna take all of that with you up the mountain.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate the storage space.”

  After cleaning up the staticky packing peanuts, she sat down on the floor and started dividing up what she’d need for the day. Mike went to answer the ringing phone, and she arranged the equipment and forms into the backpack she’d bought at Stan’s Dungeon. She tucked the rest into the crate and shoved it back out of the way.

  With her gear slung over her shoulder and pushing the GPR cart before her, she met Mike in the main room.

  “I’d be happy to give you the nickel tour,” he said, leaning on the counter.

  “I don’t want to take you away from your work.”

  He shrugged. “I’m the only one at the station right now, but I can give you the tour after work.”

  “Okay. I’ll come by when I’m done.” Maybe she was being too suspicious, but most men who’d showed any interest in her wanted something. Maybe Mike only wanted someone to talk to, and was just clumsy about it.

  “Take a radio,” he said. He plucked a walkie-­talkie out of a charger and shoved it across the counter to her. “Just in case you need anything. Which way you headed?”

  “Thanks. My instructions are for Specimen Ridge.”

  “Trailhead’s two miles down the road, leading from the parking lot. Take one of those.” He pointed at a display on the counter of what looked like tiny fire extinguishers.

  She picked one up and read the label. “Bear spray?”

  “Better than mace. Stay upwind of it, and be careful.”

  “Will do.” She gave Mike a smart salute that made him smirk.

  Petra clomped out to the parking lot with her gear, scraping the wheels of the GPR unit in the gravel. Sig scrambled up off the seat of the Bronco and pressed his nose to the window as she loaded her gear. All the windows were already smeared with snot marks.

  As she pulled the Bronco out of the parking lot onto the main road, she wondered if he’d ever been in the park before.

  At the trailhead, she parked the Bronco and popped open her door. Sig clambered over her lap and bounded to th
e pavement of the empty parking lot, wagging his tail. She reached for him, and he ducked away.

  “Don’t let anybody see you,” she grumbled, grabbing her gun belt. When she put it on, the guns were concealed neatly beneath her jacket. She didn’t expect to be charged with carrying a concealed weapon—­even though, from what she’d seen, the only law enforcement around here was Mike.

  Consulting her map, she set off toward Specimen Ridge.

  It felt good to be working again.

  The thinness of breath that Petra had felt when she first arrived in Temperance was diminishing. She found that she could fill her lungs without struggling, and she pushed forward, hiking through a sea of wild grasses and sage dotted with elk. The trail dropped away where a creek met the river, splashing a cool mist of water against her face. She even stopped to strip off her boots and socks and soak her feet in the tempting shallows. The river was bracingly cold, coming down from the mountain. Completely unlike the warm, sluggish springwater from yesterday. The sun was warming overhead, and she closed her eyes, listening to the gurgle of the current.

  This far out in the wild, she felt safe. Not like she did in Temperance, with the ­people with their guns and odd blood and strange history.

  Sig followed her dutifully throughout the morning, though he was irritated by the squeak and clattering sounds that the GPR cart made as she pushed it along before them. He was doing a good job of pretending to be a dog; the few tourists that she encountered didn’t look twice at him. Once, he tore off after a rabbit, and Petra feared that she’d lost him. But he returned a few minutes later with the rabbit clutched in his jaws. Petra figured that it was simply good manners to take a break and allow him to eat his prize.

  She continued south and east to Specimen Ridge, the slopes covered in tall grass and yellow mustard. She climbed the ridge slowly. This was higher than she’d ever gone, and she was determined to pace herself. She’d read that this was a place where amethyst and opal were often found. Volcanic ash had insinuated itself into trees, petrifying them. They stood at the summit, broken stubs among the rubble of yellow rock and pine, pale as bones. This layer was one of dozens of fossilized forests that lay beneath the ridge. Each successive forest had grown atop the one before, to be subjected to the same fossilization process.

  She powered up her handheld GPS device, wrestled the clipboard out of her backpack, and logged her position. Switching on the power of the GPR cart, she was rewarded by the glow of the readout screen between the handlebars as it booted up. In an environment as fragile as Specimen Ridge, she’d only be able to take soil samples at a limited depth. The GPR would allow her to see beneath the surface, to see what had lain in darkness for thousands of years.

  She pushed the cart along the surface of the ridge, watching how the radar waves created a striated picture of the world below. She could see striations that suggested levels of porous volcanic rock, thick streaks of basalt, and dark black shadows that could be obsidian. She saw drifts of buried ash and the sketchy shapes of petrified tree roots, deeper layers of the buried forest. The surface levels were squiggled, indicating uneven erosion as the petrified trees resisted and the minerals around them washed away. It was a ghostly image, sketching out a past that no living person had ever seen with their own eyes, a history of fire and silence sealed up in the earth. She watched, riveted, as the hidden forest revealed itself to her.

  Petra ran the GPR cart until the battery indicator ran low, then turned to take the soil samples designated in her instructions. She should have allowed the cart to charge thoroughly overnight, but she couldn’t resist taking it out for a test run.

  The soil samples were boring, entry-­level work: augur out a sample at a fixed depth, place the sample in a jar, record the exact location, label the jar. Wash, rinse, repeat. But Petra was grateful not to have work that was critically important. She never wanted the responsibility of life and death ever again. She’d be happy to be a drone for the rest of her life.

  Petra set her augur to the ground while Sig busied himself with marking his territory. No respect for history. She carefully chiseled samples of the petrified trees into her bottles. She ran her fingers over the spider tendrils of roots. They were gorgeous in their asymmetry, a once-­fragile living thing transformed to eternal stone. The wood itself wasn’t part of her USGS work, but the samples might make for a fascinating paper. She could imagine the roots of these dead trees winding down into the primordial darkness she’d glimpsed before. She was one of the few to see the entirety of such an ancient tree. She imagined how she could assemble the data in a descriptive portrait. Show the world what a strange and eternal place this was.

  She worked her assignment until the sun lowered on the horizon, and hefted her full pack of sample bottles. Bored, Sig was making a pest of himself by attempting to chew the wheels on the GPR cart. Petra wrested the cart away from him. She’d have to come back tomorrow with a full battery and more bottles. She descended the ridge from the northwest, to come directly back to the parking lot. The path was little-­used, barely more than a footpath.

  Light slanted through the pines as she descended. Squirrels flung pinecones from the trees at Sig, and he growled and snapped at them. They squeaked and chattered furiously in the trees.

  Petra hurried through the assault, covering her head with one arm and thrusting the squeaking cart ahead of her with the other. She tripped over a rut in the trail and fell sprawling to the pine needle-­covered ground. She swore, hoping that none of the plastic sample containers had broken. She sat up, grumbling at her skinned palms. Sig was beside her, casting a dirty look at the originators of the air raid behind them.

  Petra’s back pocket rang. She rolled over and dug her phone out of her pocket. Leave it to Mike to not trust her on a stroll through the woods.

  “Yeah.” She cradled the phone in the crook of her neck. “This is Petra.”

  A thin hiss echoed from her phone.

  “Hello?”

  She glanced at the caller ID: UNKNOWN NUMBER. Her grip tightened on the phone. Maybe someone had seen her flyer and had some information about her father. She was terrified to scare the caller away.

  A voice echoed from what seemed to be a very far distance:

  “Get away. Now, while you can.”

  “Dad?” She sucked in her breath. God, it sounded like him. Just like him. It—­

  A dial tone echoed in her ear.

  “Dad, don’t . . .”

  It was him. It had to be. With shaking fingers that smeared sap all over the keypad, she scrolled for the last incoming call and hit the CALL button. It rang exactly twice and went dead.

  “Damn it.” Yet hope flared within her. She’d heard her father’s voice, she was certain of it. He’d called her, and that meant he had to be alive, somewhere. Maybe she could get Mike to trace the number.

  “Huh.”

  She paused in climbing to her feet, squinting at something pale and splintered below the pines. Her GPR cart had rolled away into the soft bed of pine needles. The shape beyond it looked like a piece of the petrified forest. Had the ridge eroded on this slope enough to reveal another, older incarnation of the forest?

  Her curiosity piqued, Petra crawled forward on her hands and knees. Pinesap stuck dried needles to her palms.

  Sig growled. Petra looked back at him. His fur bristled, and he crouched close to the ground.

  “You need to get over the squirrels. Really.”

  But Sig wasn’t looking up. He was looking past her, at the petrified specimen. His nose flared and shivered.

  Petra reached into her pack for a pick. Was Sig sensing a snake . . . or . . . God forbid, a larger predator? A bear?

  A thin, reedy moan echoed from the foot of the pine.

  Petra scrambled back, heart hammering. She dropped the pick and reached for the bear spray.

  The moan sounded again. It didn�
�t sound like a bear. It sounded . . . human.

  Petra crept toward the sound, expecting to find an injured hiker. The pine needles were soft underfoot, muffling her steps. Sig slunk before her. But he didn’t go beyond the tree. He stopped at the jagged piece of petrified wood, whimpered, circled it.

  Petra peered at what she’d assumed to be a centuries-­old tree. Something dead and silent. She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God . . .”

  It wasn’t a tree.This thing was horribly, horribly alive. Bones were warped and twisted, calcified around what was unmistakably a human face. She saw no evidence of eyes in the sockets, but she did see teeth in a jagged, frozen jaw. A thin, wordless keening flexed the ribs.

  Her hands scrabbled in the pine needles for her pick. “Hang on. I’ll get you out of there.” She swung awkwardly with the pick, splintering away pieces of petrified material and summoning blood to the jagged surface. The thing shrieked.

  Petra recoiled. This wasn’t someone encased in a prison of petrified wood—­the prison was the person. A prison of bone.

  She dug through her pack for her walkie-­talkie.

  “Mike, this is Petra. Are you out there?”

  Static crackled. “Hey, Petra. See the sights?”

  “I need paramedics, now.”

  “What’s your twenty?”

  “Huh?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Back side of Specimen Ridge.” She read her GPS coordinates off her handheld device. She dropped it twice before she gave him a complete reading.

  “Sending out help now.” There was a burst of silence, as she could imagine Mike working the radio panel at the ranger station. “What happened?”