Where the Rock Splits the Sky

by Philip Webb

  Yiska barely moves. I think he must be dead already, but as I draw back the poncho I see him blink out of the ruins of his face.

  I force myself not to scream. “Where is the Valley of Rocks?”

  His flesh is marbled red. It leaks into the dust. His eyes wander to the sky behind me, beseeching, already fading. I try to arrest that gaze, to bring it to Earth.

  “Where?”

  The pupils open, close, open. But they rest on me at last.

  “Choose,” he whispers. “You must choose.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t know how.”

  “Face her.”

  “Yiska!”

  I lose him again. Deliverance beckons. A scuff of boots on shale draws closer.

  “In the grave … your choice.”

  “The moccasins? I don’t understand. Stay with me.”

  “Visitors are … weak. She needs you.”

  Kelly barks at someone to unhand her. Her throttled rage is met with laughter. No, not laughter — something like a rendition of it, mirthless. The leisurely draw of gun from holster has a distinctive creak to it. Yiska recognizes it, too, greets it with a pained smile. Shadows fall upon us. Will I hear it when it comes — the gunshot? But this one is not for me. The barrel glances my cheek on its way to rest point-blank beside the arrow shaft. There is a calm about the killing, the way a broken horse is put down. Yiska blinks, but the boom leaves him half-lidded. I feel the jolt as a life is taken.

  “There” comes a voice from behind. “How easy a soul departs. Easier than its arrival. Wouldn’t you say, Megan Bridgwater?”

  I turn, but sunlight on the far canyon rim flares behind the figure like the corona of an eclipse. I see only shadow, until the head bows closer.

  It’s a reflex, my scrambling away, one that I’m powerless to resist. I am a child in the throes of a nightmare, such is the horror that faces me.

  “Do not be afraid. It comes to us all. Even the late Jethro Wells.”

  There are no lips to make these words — they issue from a place deep inside the animated cadaver before me.

  A greenish hand gestures at the face — at the gobbets of meat and glistening cheekbones, at the grin of Death himself. “Poor Jethro. Son of a truck driver and a mail clerk. More famous dead than alive. I should get a new host, but I’m attached to this one. Helps no end with the terrifying I must do. Any self-respecting outlaw would agree.”

  The teeth nudge, loose in their withered gums. The eyeballs are awful to behold. They flicker with tiny topaz fires — naked in an expression of permanent alarm. A bulge from one socket has the impossible aspect of a tear, but it is just a maggot worming free. A flurry of others follow, wriggling into the light. The Visitor-in-chief hobbles closer with a halting gait, sloughing bits of flesh as it strides. Here and there through rents in the clothing, at the elbows, at the knees, I see glimpses of blue fiber — strands of the alien body within.

  An abattoir stench washes over me. “What a merry, merry dance you have led us. But it ends here. Your mistake, should you care to know, was to leave that sorry survivor of the Mavis Pilgrim.”

  For the first time, I am aware of other figures closing in around me — outlaws and tribesmen. The corpse of Jethro Wells turns to them, as awkward as a broken marionette. “Hogart was the name he gave us, I believe. Before he died. He overheard every word of your plans. You should have dispatched him when you had the chance.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Kelly — trussed up but struggling. Navajo warriors, or their stolen forms, watch over her.

  “No word from the great tracker’s daughter?”

  The voice has an unearthly tone — pressed out in gusts as though from a punctured barrel organ. Wafts of rot escape with each phrase.

  “How convenient, this ready-made grave. How fitting. Look about you. This is where your Zone adventure fails. This is where the hopes of your race die. Your father was indeed cunning — to have hidden away his hard-won secrets. Even more cunning to have laid a trail for you to find them.”

  I find a way to my feet. “Take me to the Valley of the Rocks,” I demand.

  The head cocks to one side. “I shall. But first you must say good-bye to your friend.”

  He turns to face Kelly, who starts to struggle.

  “Leave her!” I cry. “Let her go! You are to take me to the Valley of the Rocks now!”

  “You command me, mongrel child? My orders are from her. You are to come alone.”

  As the voice rises in volume, so a flap of skin in Jethro’s throat vibrates. He points at Kelly. “Hang her.”

  “No!”

  I chase forward to reach Kelly, but strong hands hold me back.

  It takes no more than a minute for the Visitors to tie Kelly’s hands and bundle her onto a horse.

  She watches me and makes a great effort to compose herself. No more struggling. The horse shifts nervously as a noose is slung over the branches of the cemetery cottonwood.

  “Not going for the ol’ frozen touch of death, then?” says Kelly with admirable steadiness.

  “You would prefer it? Your body preserved for posterity?” replies the Jethro Visitor.

  “If you’re giving me a choice, I’ll go for with-my-boots-on-aged-ninety-five.”

  “The manner of your death is fitting. Not that you shall ever see it now, but we have a noose around this entire world, a stranglehold that will not now be broken.”

  “Got any ideas?” Kelly says to me, almost in passing.

  I watch her in a daze. Words have abandoned me.

  In desperation, I turn to the impassive faces of the tribesmen around us. The way they are dressed for war, in feathers and paint and wolf skins, makes me hope that they are perhaps human. Why would they honor these traditions otherwise? If they are in thrall to Jethro, maybe they can be turned. Perhaps they can resist like Yiska. But now they are near enough to for me to see their eyes — copper bright and dead as coins.

  “There was a boy also,” one of the outlaws says. It is the ugly one we have brushed with before — in Brokeoff and at the Mavis.

  Jethro whirls and shoots. The outlaw staggers back from the blast.

  “Yes, a boy.” One, two, three more shots. “Who should be in a shallow grave.”

  The others cringe from the murder in a way that could never be described as human. They submit to their demented lord, shaking in weird convulsions. The slaughtered one lies in the dirt, and its wounds are so deep that its strands spill out like a disturbed nest of snakes.

  Jethro stumps back to us. “Where is the boy?”

  Kelly and I both stare at each other.

  “No matter. If he is alive, I will leave others to wait for him. Any last words?”

  “Yeah,” says Kelly. “But not for you.”

  I expect gallows humor. But her voice is quiet, just for me. She says a prayer for our souls and those of her family. She names each Tillman — a roll call that will never be answered. And then she sings. Her clear voice reverberates across the lonely slope — a country song about a woman who waits for her lover to return from the Civil War. What surprises me is the effect it has on our captors — they stare at her, transfixed almost. Perhaps music means something to them.

  I think she is trying to appeal to them, to unlock a crumb of pity. But I have seen into their visions. I know they are ruthless in their pursuit to conquer. Each verse turns out another chapter in the woman’s ongoing misfortune — it is a lengthy tale.

  And then I realize.

  I turn to follow Kelly’s fixed line of sight, and in the distance, out of canyon shadow, I spy a trail of dust. A lone rider.

  Kelly finds another line, and another. There are repeats, and a few improvisations that almost work, but not quite.

  Jethro raises one decomposing arm. “Enough!”

  I snatch a glance behind me. For a few moments, the rider disappears below the brow of a dip.

  Where the thought sparks from I cannot say. I recall the Visitor at
Brokeoff, the one who has just been killed. Your mother! That witch! We should have hunted her down sooner.

  “My mother,” I say. “Why did you despise her?”

  Jethro turns from Kelly. He drags so close to me that I can see flies feasting on old sores.

  The Navajo’s words return to me. Visitors … are weak.

  “She resisted, didn’t she?” I whisper. “Like Yiska.”

  Jethro nods, dislodging one of the vertebrae so that the head cricks to one side.

  Even as I say these words, the meaning of them is slow to crystallize. And yet I feel I have always known.

  You don’t know, do you?

  That witch!

  Mongrel child …

  My mother was a Visitor.

  Suddenly the rider emerges. He rides at full tilt, arm aloft, brandishing a rifle. My heart leaps at the sight. It is Luis. And I would recognize that horse anywhere. It will be only seconds before we hear their approach. This desperate charge will come too late, in vain, for what can he do alone against so many?

  One of the Navajo braves lets out a cry.

  Jethro staggers to the tree and seizes the reins of Kelly’s horse.

  A shot rings out. Then another. Visitors fall and scatter.

  “Kelly!”

  Her eyes fix to mine and she takes a mighty breath.

  The saddle slides from under her and the noose snaps shut.

  “KELLY!”

  Jethro throws his dead arm at me, full force. A sodden blow to the teeth.

  Squelch of rotten flesh.

  The horizon swings before me.

  No sound.

  Just Cisco tearing into the cemetery. And Luis firing from the hip.

  Chaos unfolds about me. It has the frantic hallmark of a skirmish, but I cannot make out details — only the wrestling motion of dust and bodies. It is happening now, I tell myself, though it appears to recede into distant history.

  Pain skewers my jaw. Isn’t that good — pain? Isn’t that life?

  I find that I am lying faceup. My whole body is seized by pins and needles. Someone is punching me. No, that is just my breathing. The rasps from my lungs have the scrape of spurs on gravel.

  Smells and sounds and light assault me. All at once, together in a great upheaval — salt-blood-grit-whooping-cough-gun-smoke-blaze.

  Luis props me up though I am as weak as a mewling cub. He lifts me clean off the ground, holds me close. A stream of Spanish prayers spill from his lips, too fast for me to catch. I hear promises to God, as if he is haggling for my life.

  “I knew you’d come,” I croak.

  From over his shoulder Cisco’s huge wet-whiskered muzzle nestles into my face, snorting and searching for my smell.

  Luis stands me up gently, hands hovering in case I should keel over. The graveyard is scattered with dead Visitors.

  “How?”

  “Don’t speaking now,” he urges. “Is Marshall, from there, he shoot.” He points to an escarpment opposite Spider Rock.

  “Damn, he’s one hell of a shot.” Kelly has acquired the voice of a wheezing saloon regular.

  She sways drunkenly toward me, her hands still tied behind her back, the chopped noose swinging from her neck. “Where’s the zombie badass?”

  We cast around among the fallen, but Jethro is not one of them.

  “Some ride away. Eight, I think. Not together. Some south, some east.”

  With a dagger, Luis cuts Kelly’s bonds. We stand in an exhausted daze, blinking at each other. As three once more.

  Water, sweet water. It tumbles over my face, and I drink it down in great painful gulps, watching as Marshall canters over the canyon floor from his vantage point. I feel raw and pounded and sick. But my head begins to work. We cannot stay here long. Jethro will regroup for another attack, no doubt.

  Marshall smiles at me as he dismounts from his mule. “Sure reckon you two used up more lives than Nugget.” He waves away my thanks.

  “If they’da hung Kelly higher with more slack, she’da croaked on the first swing. I tried for the rope, but you only hit that in the movies, I figure. Drew a bead on the leader; reckon I hit him, too, but didn’t slow him down none.”

  “He’s already dead,” I mutter.

  “Huh?”

  I try to explain.

  “Musta just clipped the human hide, then. Either way, we stole a march on them sons of bitches …” His voice trails away when he sees Yiska’s body.

  He takes off his hat, pulls the burnt poncho over Yiska’s face, and makes the sign of the cross.

  I tell them about Yiska, how the Navajo brought Visitation upon the Earth, about the White Shell Woman they thought they’d summoned. I tell them about Yiska’s resistance, his last words.

  From the excavated grave I retrieve the flag, the moccasins, and the knife.

  “What is this?” asks Luis.

  “These things represent a choice I must make.”

  “You?” Luis frowns at me.

  “Something lives at the heart of the Zone. At the Valley of the Rocks. Like a goddess. She holds Pa. She waits for me. I must face her.”

  “She wants you?” Luis looks frightened. “Why?”

  How can I tell them what I know? I wipe some blood from my mouth. It is red, just like human blood. But I am not human. Part of me is Visitor. A human father and an abductee mother. My body has not been stolen. It has been made.

  Should I not feel horror? Instead I feel layers of mystery falling away from me. It makes sense now. Why I am so clueless at matters of the heart. Why I feel the Zone so strongly. Why the Visitors do not revolt me as perhaps they should.

  I gaze at my friends. They will not understand, they will not accept, how can they? They have lost their families to Visitation. I remember when we first met Kelly, after Luis threatened her with a gun: They sealed a pact to kill each other should either of them succumb to abduction. The Visitor essence of me would surely repel them.

  I weigh the grave goods in my hands. A symbolic choice? Knife or white shell moccasins? What does it mean?

  “I must go to the Valley of the Rocks.”

  “We,” corrects Luis. “We must go.”

  “Yeah, if we knew where the hell it was,” says Kelly.

  “Valley of the Rocks is the Navajo name for it,” answers Marshall. “Better known as Monument Valley. It’s marked by three sandstone buttes.”

  “Where the rock splits the sky,” I murmur.

  I stare out west. All this time, we have fled Jethro’s gang, and all this time, I have followed the trail my father left for me. But either way, the destination remains the same. Why was it so important for me to come to the heart of the Zone with my three companions, when as a captive of Jethro, I would have ended up in the same place?

  Only Pa will know. Was I right to trust his messages?

  I march over to Cisco, kiss him on the forelock, and yank the saddlebags to the ground. I pull out cans of pinto beans and toss them to my weary companions. Kelly catches hers but looks confused as I pull the ring top on mine and glug it all down with its honey sauce.

  “Strip down your packs, anything that might slow us down,” I say between syrupy mouthfuls. “We take water and guns. That’s it. Jethro knows Monument Valley’s where we’re going. So we fuel up now and move out. You, too, Marshall. You’ll have to take one of the Visitor horses — your mule is too slow.”

  Marshall shakes his head and chuckles. “Well, ma’am, I appreciate you stepping up. And it’s a good plan ’n’ all. Can’t fault it much anyhow.”

  I wipe the juice from my face. “But?”

  “But I ain’t going. I’m staying here. Rearguard action …”

  Luis starts to complain, but Marshall holds his hand up. “Now, listen up. Jethro’s coming back here. Has to. See if you made it or not. And when he does, ol’ Marshall’s gonna be waiting.” He pats his rifle. “Do more damage with this in an ambush than out in the open. Stands to reason. I’m just surplus to requirements. Best thing
I can do is watch your back.”

  We stand in silence for a moment. Luis hangs his head. It is the tone in Marshall’s voice that betrays the truth we all know but won’t speak of. It is a last-stand situation. He cannot hope to hold them all off from afar — he must wait until they are close to have any chance.

  “Is too many,” says Luis quietly. “Eight.”

  “Well, now, I counted seven. Listen, I ain’t planning on leaving my mule or Nugget to fend for themselves. You do what you got to. Then we got ourselves a White Sands rendezvous, see?”

  Luis says nothing, refuses to meet his eye. Marshall tuts and grumbles and walks over to him. They have some private words in Spanish and embrace. I can only guess at the things they have been through since the land river. Luis mounts up first and starts to ride slowly west, waiting for us to catch up.

  I think there are tears standing in Marshall’s eye but he’s gruff with us. “Get gone now. I ain’t standing on no ceremony here. Can’t shoot straight when things is getting emotional.”

  Kelly springs up and gives him a hug he pretends he has no time for. But I see him smile anyway. What man wouldn’t? He holds his hand out to me.

  “Tracker to tracker,” he says. “You head west out the canyon, follow the mesas north. Should hit a two-bit place called Kayenta. Cross the river there and you got the road takes you into the valley. Forty, fifty mile. Tell Virgil he owes me a drink. Hell, he owes me a whole bottle-a sour mash. And he can deliver it to the saloon I’m building at White Sands.”

  Kelly and I ride in silence after Luis. I keep turning in my saddle, and Marshall is there watching us by the shade of the cottonwood. When we are three abreast on the canyon floor I turn again, but he has gone.

  We keep a brisk pace, turning out of the canyon, through the reservation town of Chinle, and out onto the ochre plains.

  We are together but it is a lonely ride. The Zone is oppressive here. Unseen power hangs in every stone, every tree, every spiky outline against the sky.

  Wind kicks up. It funnels along the edge of the mesa walls that steer us north. I keep the perimeter for ten miles before I even realize I’m doing it. It has become natural, habitual. I am a tracker of this land at last. The huge squared-off buttresses that enclose us in shadow are rocks no more to me. They are markers steeped in a vast sea of Zone currents, and I feel those currents wash through my skull.