by R. R. Irvine
A long, drawn-out cry, “B-o-y-d,” hissed from her throat.
“No,” he screeched in answer.
He wasn’t Boyd, yet he couldn’t stop to explain. To stop meant . . . God, he couldn’t even think about it.
“Not me,” he managed to yell.
Then he ran like never before. Even so, the hellish figure seemed to be gaining on him, its arms spread like fiery wings. Wings that carried death. The worst kind of death he could imagine.
Why didn’t she fall down and die? He opened his mouth to tell her just that. But it was her cry that sizzled into the night: “Wait for me, Boyd.”
Norris stumbled over a rock, almost fell.
“Help,” he coughed.
“Boyd,” the torch answered.
“Not me,” he croaked.
Where was Boyd? After all, he was the one she wanted. Or did she? Had she been sent to avenge Norris’s brother?
From behind him an indecipherable cry erupted from the scorched throat. It had to be a death cry. Dear God, she couldn’t go on forever.
Too bad he couldn’t have helped her. But it had already been too late when he found her. The fire was already out of control. Yet without it, he might have missed her in the night.
Better to have missed her than to see what the flames did to her. Dear God, his brother had looked the same, and all because of Norris’s carelessness with matches.
Tears flushed down his face. He hadn’t the courage to help either one of them.
Norris snapped his head around. Mother of God. The flaming girl was so close she lit the way for him, making it possible for him to dodge rocks and trees.
“Boyd,” she cried. “Wait.”
Then all at once it wasn’t her voice, but that of his brother. “Sid, help me. Please, Sid.”
It was as it had been before. And now Norris knew that running was useless, that the girl was dead, that the thing pursing him was his brother.
Norris stopped. He didn’t even have time to turn before the flaming figure was upon him, wrapping its fiery arms around him in a deadly hug.
For an instant, Norris welcomed the embrace. It was justice; it was an end to his torment. Then he felt the fire eating at him. His muscles spasmed and jerked as he fought to free himself from the searing grip. But the arms had locked around him.
It was a death dance then, with the only music his, echoing wail of agony.
32
JACK GRAHAM sneezed. It was then he realized that he really did smell smoke. As if to confirm his sense of smell, the sky began to glow.
He grabbed Benyon’s arm. “Look. A signal fire. They must have found her.”
“It’s about time,” Keene complained. “A dumb trick, running off like that.”
Keene, the mayor, and Graham had made up one search party. The other consisted of Jarman and Norris, despite the fact that neither one of them knew the country.
“That looks awfully bright for a signal fire,” Benyon said.
“What else could it be?” Graham asked.
“Maybe they’re cooking one of those burros for dinner.” Keene snickered. “Or maybe my star is rising in the east.”
“That’s west,” Benyon pointed out.
“Aren’t you worried about the girl?” Graham said to Keene.
The man didn’t reply.
But Benyon did. “Let’s move while it’s still bright enough to guide us.”
Between their flashlights and the fire’s glow, there was enough light to enable them to move quickly. Within minutes they topped a hill overlooking a long clearing, at the edge of which burned a tree.
But at the other end of the clearing, maybe a hundred yards from where they stood, two figures came together in a fiery dance.
Without a word, the three men charged down the hill. It couldn’t have taken them more than thirty seconds, half a minute, to reach the burning pair. By then, however, death had stilled their awful dance.
Graham would have been sick if he’d had anything left in his stomach. Gagging sounds came from the mayor even as they edged upwind from the charred bodies.
No one spoke until Jarman suddenly appeared out of the darkness.
Then Keene said, “I thought that was you there, Boyd.”
Graham’s flashlight played over Jarman’s face. The cameraman’s eyes didn’t so much as blink.
Too late the light snapped off. Even in darkness, Jarman’s haunted stare stayed with Graham, like a terrible afterburn.
It was then Graham realized that the cameraman’s presence meant that both Norris and the girl were dead, that their’s were the bodies locked in the charred embrace.
“I kissed her only once,” Jarman said.
Benyon coughed. “We’ll have to bury them here, at least temporarily. We don’t want animals getting at them.”
“We don’t have anything to dig with,” Keene protested.
“We’ll cover them with rocks,” the mayor replied. “And from now on we all stick together. I don’t want anybody else getting separated.”
“And Yeba Kah?” Graham asked.
“We’ll go back for him as soon as it’s light.”
The thought of the Indian out there, alone in the night, handcuffed to a tree, weighed on Graham’s conscience. “Don’t you think—”
“I’m not taking any more chances. In the dark, we might get lost.”
The mayor blew out a noisy breath. “The last thing I want is to have one of us walk into The Devil’s Breath.”
******
Benyon caught himself nodding off to sleep and jerked himself forcefully upright, his head snapping as if controlled by some malevolent puppet master. His eyes, dulled from staring into the camp fire, felt cinder-laden and sluggish.
He checked his fellow fire-watchers who, it turned out, weren’t exactly watching anything, but dozing.
Strange, he thought, that they could sleep after what had happened. In Jarman’s case, of course, sleep was predictable, the body’s way of reacting to personal loss. But then, if that was true, he, Benyon, ought to be sleeping with a vengeance. After all, he’d lost more than anyone else. Gone was the town council, his friends, all but himself and Harriet. Gone was the publicity for the Hunting Ground, and with that Moondance would go too, eventually.
So why wasn’t he sleeping? The answer was easy: Evil was on the loose here in the high Uintas. For all he knew, it was watching him now, out there beyond the reach of firelight.
He studied the sleepers. Death could tiptoe in and cut their throats without any trouble at all. Except, of course, that he was awake.
Benyon stood up to stretch out a cramp. His shadow fell across Graham’s face, causing the artist to come awake with a start, his hook slashing out reflexively.
“Easy,” Benyon whispered.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. The sun won’t be up for a couple of hours yet. So you might as well go back to sleep.”
“I didn’t realize I was asleep. I just wanted to rest my eyes.”
“Not a bad idea,” the mayor admitted and was about to do the same when he heard something move in the darkness beyond the fire. He cocked his head, listening and staring. Then he saw the eyes, reflecting the firelight.
Benyon glanced at Graham to check his reaction, but the man looked as if he’d gone back to sleep.
Damn him. The mayor wanted confirmation that he wasn’t seeing things. And God knew he had reason to doubt his vision, because the eyes now seemed to be blinking on and off. Each time they came on again it was in a slightly different place. Whatever it was out there was circling their fire.
But then, that wasn’t unusual. Animals were bound to be drawn to the light.
Even so, the eyes bothered Benyon. There was something alien about them.
He dumped the last of the wood onto the fire. He hoped the flames would last until dawn. But as the fresh fuel caught hold and the light grew, so did the intensity of the circling eyes.
As quietly as
possible, he levered a cartridge into the chamber of his rifle. Then he lined up the muzzle with the eyes and slipped off the safety.
But just as he took up the trigger slack, the eyes winked out as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown.
Benyon froze in place until his muscles quivered with the strain. Just as he’d begun to think he’d imagined the alien orbs, he heard a noise—footsteps, he was certain of it.
Footsteps meant only one thing. It was that damned Indian who was out there. Somehow he’d managed to escape his handcuffs.
Grim determination grew inside the mayor. He had no choice now; he had to turn Yeba Kah into a truly good Indian. Yeba Kah, who’d been the cause of their trouble all along. Yeba Kah would pay—for Alden Fisk, for Lamar Mortenson, for Del Timmons, for the first TV crew, for Norris and the girl. For all of them, and for Moondance, Yeba Kah would die.
Holding his .30-06 at the ready, Benyon moved stealthily away from the fire as he followed the sound of receding footsteps.
33
JACK GRAHAM opened his mouth to plead against amputation. But in that instant before sound escaped, he realized he’d been dreaming. His mouth snapped shut, lodging the abortive protest in his throat like a piece of sharp bone.
A fit of coughing doubled him over the fire, which had burned down to a faint flicker.
Keene slapped him on the back, harder than necessary.
Graham sputtered.
“Where the hell is the mayor?” Keene asked abruptly.
“He was—” Graham got out before coughing got the better of him. “He was here a minute ago.”
“Swell.”
Graham’s reply had to wait while he struggled with a reluctant esophagus.
Finally he swallowed down the last dregs of nightmare and said, “We were talking just now. I closed my eyes and”—he gestured impatiently with his hook—“I must have fallen asleep.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” Jarman said. His flat, emotionless tone left no room for argument.
“So where is the mayor?” Keene demanded.
The cameraman closed his eyes and sighed as if he’d lost all interest in what went on around him. But then he said, “He just got up and walked away. That was more than an hour ago.”
“Jesus,” Graham breathed. A sudden chill caused him to twitch.
“What the hell is going on?” Keene wanted to know.
Graham shook his head; he had no answers that Keene would believe.
“Shit! The mayor is responsible for us. He can’t just up and walk away. You heard him yourself. We’re supposed to stay together. Besides, the fate of the Hunting Ground is still in my hands. Mine.” Keene spread his fingers.
Graham shrugged. It was all the comment he felt like making.
“Look here,” Keene continued, “you know Benyon better than I do.”
“By a few days only.”
“What’s he up to?”
“The answers I have, I don’t want to believe myself.” Graham hesitated. Was Keene ready to believe what Graham had been forced to conclude? Was he ready to believe that Benyon was gone for good, probably like all the others?
“Maybe he didn’t have any choice,” Graham said finally. “Maybe his time had come, like the sheriff, like—”
“Don’t give me that kind of shit. Jarman here saw him walk away as sweet as you please, didn’t you, Jarman?”
The cameraman didn’t say otherwise.
Keene went on. “There was no bear chasing him. No Indian spirits either. I don’t think you ever did see a bear chasing us.” He tapped the side of his head to indicate what he thought of Graham’s mental state.
Graham cleared his throat. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t have blamed Keene for being skeptical. But the last few days had been anything but normal.
As for himself, Graham knew one thing for certain—that he should have taken Harry’s advice. He should have stayed in town.
Wistfully, he watched phosphorescent insects darting in and out of the smoke, appearing and disappearing like flickering candles.
“Maybe he was drawn into the forest,” Graham said with a sigh, “just as those bugs are drawn to our fire. It’s dangerous but they have no choice. Maybe the mayor had no more control over his destiny than they do.”
Keene spat into the fire. “You’re beginning to sound like that crazy Indian. The next thing you’ll be telling me is that we’ve incurred the wrath of some ancient Indian god.”
“Three people died today, horribly. Most of the town council has been killed. And now the mayor walks off into the night after telling everyone to stay close to the fire.” Graham paused to draw in a breath. “As if that weren’t enough, the burros ran off with our sleeping bags and food. So if I sound like that Indian, it’s because I don’t believe in coincidences, not one right after another. I think Yeba Kah has been making sense, only the rest of us didn’t have the brains to listen.”
“Great, just great.” Keene picked up his rifle and laid it across his lap. “But you’re forgetting one thing. Maybe Benyon just went to pee. He knows this country, after all.”
“So did the sheriff.”
Keene made an aggressive gesture with his .30-06. “Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that there are werewolves in these mountains.” Keene clicked his tongue.
“They dance in the moonlight,” Graham answered.
“Who, for Chrissake?”
“Animals . . . I’m not sure. But I saw the dancing myself.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re the one who’s dangerous.”
For the next hour, despite almost constant heckling from Keene, Graham recounted all he knew about Moondance, and the strange stories that clouded the town’s history. He left out nothing.
As he finished speaking, dawn came crawling over the mountains. And even Keene, although he kept up a pretense of skepticism, sighed with obvious relief when the surrounding shadows could be seen for what they were—pines and spruce and out-croppings of gray granite.
For Graham, however, the light of day seemed all the more malevolent. Unaccountably, he had the feeling that now he would be forced to look clearly upon the fate that awaited them.
******
When Benyon heard The Devil’s Breath, he knew that he’d been led straight back to the area where the Indian had been handcuffed.
Yeba Kah probably thought there was some sort of justice in the maneuver, which was fine by Benyon. He was quite content to let the man think he was getting away with something as long as the mayor had the last laugh.
Benyon stopped abruptly. There, not twenty yards away, was the tree, with enough light behind it to allow him to see that Yeba Kah hadn’t moved, that he was still handcuffed.
Impossible. It had to be some kind of trick, some kind of hallucination. But Benyon was not a man given to fanciful flights. So if that was the Indian he was seeing, who had he been following for the past hour?
What had he been following?
Warily, he moved toward the tree. A yard away he paused to stare down at the helpless man.
“I am very cold,” said the Indian.
Benyon didn’t respond. He was listening to the rhythmic sighs from The Devil’s Breath. Finally he said, “I shouldn’t have left the others to come here.”
Benyon’s free hand, the one without the rifle, flopped in a loose gesture of self-condemnation.
Then the mayor squinted suspiciously. “Were you here all night?”
Yeba Kah’s answer was to rattle his handcuffs.
“But I was following something. Did it come this way? Did you see anything?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?” Benyon demanded.
“That is for you to know.”
“I . . .”
“Unlock me now.” Yeba Kah slowly moved his fingers, which were swollen to twice their normal size. “Quickly, before your time runs out.”
The mayor took a quick look behind him to make certain nothing was about
to pounce upon him, then dropped to one knee and unlocked the handcuffs. Yet even then, the Indian didn’t move, didn’t even take his arms from around the thick tree trunk.
“Here, I’ll help you,” Benyon said.
Yeba Kah’s head shook violently. “There is no time. What you seek is here.”
Benyon whirled around.
Madness slouched toward him from the forest. Swinging his rifle like a club, he backed toward the only clear ground that would give him room to maneuver, toward The Devil’s Breath.
A huge mastiff, whose distempered eyes glittered savagely, snarled as it crept forward. White froth spewed from its glistening teeth.
In a futile gesture, Benyon swung the rifle again. He missed the dog by several feet. Even as he repeated the swing, part of him rebelled against the terror that was threatening him. It’s only a dog, one dog, against you, a man. You have your wits. Use them. Don’t fight its battle. Find some place and make your stand, a spot where it can come at you from only one direction.
His only hope then was The Devil’s Breath. He knew that even as he backed toward the abyss.
Suddenly, the dog lunged. But it was a feint only, for in the next instant it sank back on its saliva-flecked haunches, raised its head toward the clear morning sky, and howled, a long plaintive note that sounded both hopeless and terrifying at the same time.
When the wail faded, silence pressed in upon the mayor. As he opened his mouth to end the hush, the mastiff went berserk. It twisted back upon itself, snapping and tearing at its own flesh. Blood spurted as its teeth bit deeper and deeper. Then the muzzle buried itself inside the stomach, reappearing to drag out a long, blood-wet string of intestine.
But that didn’t satisfy its rabid lust. With renewed ferocity, the dog tore at itself until finally its eyes began to dull.
The mayor panted. Reason began filtering back into his horror-steeped mind.
The mastiff, unable now to move its rear quarters, raised up on its forelegs and howled once again. There was a note of finality to the sound.
This time the cry echoed several times. When the echoes grew shrill, Benyon recognized them for what they were—answering cries from others of its kind.
And the cries were coming closer. They gave new life to the bloody mastiff, which began dragging itself toward Benyon, leaving a slimy red trail in its wake.
