Bright sparks burst behind her eyes, and she slumped in his grasp, unable to resist as he dragged her farther into the trees. Through the ringing in her ears Jane heard another man crashing through the brush behind them. They came out onto a level clearing and Jane tumbled to the ground. She tried to get up but her head kept spinning her back to the ground.
“Charlie,” the man who’d first grabbed her said, “go around the bend there and see if you can’t liberate us a buggy. I’ve lost my taste for trains.”
Good fortune comes when you least expect it, thought Royce. It was lucky enough that he and Charlie had decided to jump off the train as it eased into the engine house, to sneak up to Summitville and surprise Prescott when he put up for the night; but to have the chacmool itself finger the bloody girl was more than an Irishman had any right to expect.
It had walked right up to Royce and caught his arm as he was having a cigar around the back of the platform, and he’d come within a whisker of stubbing the smoke out in its black face before figuring out that it wasn’t just a dressed-up nigger who didn’t know his place.
“Nanahuatzin is here,” it had said.
Before his brain caught up with his mouth, Royce nearly blurted out “Who the hell are you, Bobo?” But he put everything together just as the rope snapped and all hell broke loose on the side of the mountain. Seeing the cars plowing back toward the engine house, he’d jumped across the other track, Charlie hot on his heels, and gotten into the trees a bit. When he’d turned around the chacmool was right there, and it calmly pointed out the girlie, screeching like a banshee in the middle of the incline.
“Bring her to Louisville. I will meet you there,” it said. Then it disappeared with unholy speed into the forest.
That had been two hours ago. Since then Charlie had acquired a horse and wagon from some rickety homestead, and they’d made fairly good time along this nameless mountain road. They had the girl, they knew the booger was going to meet Steen, and best of all Archie Prescott was smashed upside down in the wrecked boat. If he survived, he’d come to Louisville following the chacmool, and Royce would take care of him then. If not, well, Royce was a bit put out at the prospect of not being able to slip a blade in Archie himself, but all things considered it was a small disappointment. In two weeks they’d be in Louisville, and then, according to Steen, the real show would begin.
Good fortune all around.
After all he’d been through that evening, the last thing Archie expected was that he’d be unable to sleep. He knew he should be thanking God that he had survived the crash, but his head was still throbbing from the battering he’d absorbed and, all in all, he wasn’t feeling very thankful. All he could think about was getting back on the chacmool’s trail.
The feather talisman had begun spasming wildly moments before the rope snapped, and if that weren’t proof enough, Archie had seen the remains of the derailleur scattered on the tracks. The engineer on duty had simply shaken his head in amazement, crossing himself and ordering his men to clear away the newly grown foliage as quietly as possible.
Well, Archie thought, at least I know I’m on the scent. When he’d booked the passage to Pittsburgh, he hadn’t been entirely certain that his Louisville hunch was any more than that—just a hunch. But the night’s events made it pretty damned certain that his hunch had been on target.
The Pennsylvania Main Line Canal Company had provided lodging for all of the passengers who hadn’t needed emergency medical attention, and Archie had been put up in the Lemon House, a square stone inn right alongside the tracks in the center of Summitville. Work at the accident site had stopped several hours ago, after all of the passengers had been accounted for. Now it was after midnight, and the only sound was the rustling of the wind in the forest that fell away into the valley behind Lemon House. Archie’s room was at the rear of the inn, on the second floor, and he was glad that he didn’t have to look out on the lamplit tracks. Outside his window was nearly absolute darkness; only a patch of sloping lawn, splotched with clumps of wet snow, and the nearest trees were visible under a cloudy sky.
So the chacmool had tried to kill him, and in such a way as to suggest that it didn’t want to confront him directly. Was it now afraid of him for some reason, or merely anxious to keep moving and leave him behind? In either case, something fundamental had changed since the December night in Barnum’s Museum, when it had backed away instead of gulping down Archie’s yollotl. But why, that was the question, and Archie couldn’t wring an answer from his battered brain. It had recognized him, that seemed certain, but he hadn’t changed all that much in the past three months, had he? It must have learned something about him.
If the chacmool thought he was dead, though, he had a slim advantage over it. It wouldn’t be expecting him to arrive in Louisville or at the Mammoth Cave, if that was where it was bound.
One way or another, Archie resolved, he would be rid of it. No more grisly dreams, no more attempts on his life, no more horrible afternoons when the sun looked as if it had contracted a wasting disease. If killing was involved, so be it.
And that went for Steen and the Rabbit youth Royce as well. Archie didn’t know where Steen was, but he had a strong intuition that a gaudy drummer-wagon was bumping its way toward Louisville. Whatever pagan madness was being planned would surely involve Steen, whether he regained control of the chacmool or not.
Christ, what have I gotten myself into? Archie thought, rolling over on the soft hotel bed and gazing out the window of his room. I don’t even know what’s supposed to happen at the cave.
Again he felt like a walking adage, a sort of object lesson in the dangers of curiosity. After all, it was his inquisitive nature that had cost him his ear, gotten him stabbed and buried alive—generally run him afoul of homicidal madmen. Tonight he’d been lucky, surviving the train crash in fairly good form except for bruises and a twisted ankle. The injuries he’d suffered at the hands of the two Rabbits had been much worse, but it was becoming clear to Archie that no matter how his enemies proliferated, the chacmool was by far the most dangerous.
Which, he thought, should not surprise me, since it has already murdered two dozen children in cold blood and, like a cat marking its territory, left them to be found in the Hudson.
Archie sat up in bed and scratched at the stub of his left ear. Someone was pacing the length of the corridor, most likely a fellow insomniac. A walk might do me some good, too, he thought, swinging his aching legs off the bed and feeling around for his shoes.
The footsteps outside halted in front of his door. Archie straightened, listening, and the feather talisman swung against his bare chest. It was wriggling just as it had before the crash, and at the first chill touch of brass against his skin, Archie found himself looking out of someone else’s eyes.
There was no light, but he could see a door in front of him. The wallpaper border around the frame was an ornate floral pattern, one that had provoked a remote exhausted annoyance when Archie had walked through that door earlier in the night.
Desolate fear rose churning in Archie’s gut. It found me somehow, he thought, and came back to finish the job.
He swept his hand under the bed, locating his shoes and pulling them on. He was wearing only a woolen johnny, but there was no time to dress, and his coat was hanging on a peg by the door. He had to escape before the chacmool realized that he knew it was there.
Archie almost shouted for help, for whatever passed for a police force in this hamlet. But the memory of Barnum’s watchman, his arm torn off and ribs cracked open like an autopsy cadaver, choked off the cry. Whatever happens to me, Archie thought, I’ll not kill anyone else through ignorance or cowardice. Stumbling over his untied laces, he fell against the bureau and grabbed the traveling valise he’d purchased in Philadelphia. In it were Helen’s knife and some of Barnum’s money, both of which were more important than trousers at the moment.
The doorknob turned, first quietly and then with increasing violence as the c
hacmool jerked against the deadbolt lock. Archie tried to open the window and discovered that it was frozen shut. Behind him the chacmool threw itself against the door, cracking the frame and nearly breaking loose the lock assembly. A strange sound came from the doorframe, a crackling that triggered Archie’s memory of Royce McDougall bound by resurrected ropes of cornstalk. The chacmool was growing the door off its hinges.
The window wouldn’t budge, and drops of rain were beginning to fall from the ceiling. Archie took a step back and swung the valise, aiming for the center of the cross formed by the four panes. The iron-capped corner of the valise shattered the window, leaving the broken sash hanging in the frame. The crackling behind Archie grew in intensity, and a pin from one of the door’s hinges sprang loose and pinged on the wooden floor.
Not looking behind him, Archie took two steps back and dove headfirst out the window, carrying with him the remains of the sash and the bits of glass clinging to it. He turned over once in the air before landing heavily on his right hip and skidding on the frosted grass.
Archie gained his feet quickly, his teeth aching from the awkward landing and his ankle shooting sharp pains up into his calf. The sound of splintering wood reached his ears, along with a gathering chorus of angry shouts as the commotion awoke Lemon House’s other bruised and irritable guests, but Archie didn’t wait to see if the chacmool was pursuing him. He ran, slipping and stumbling on the steep hillside, too terrified even to stop and lace his shoes.
He ran downhill until his lungs were wheezing from the cold night air and the pain in his ankle hobbled him. Then he staggered into a tangle of brush and fell to the ground, listening carefully over the sound of his own ragged panting and feeling the chacmool’s feather talisman answer his pounding heart with its own quiet tremors.
Oh God, he thought, it’ll track me by the talisman. But he couldn’t take it off.
The broad valley below Lemon House had narrowed to a steep ravine that swallowed every sound save for the soft rustle of wind and the occasional plop of snow falling from the bare branches of trees. Overhead, the clouds were breaking up, and a half moon peered through the forest canopy. The craters and shadows on the moon’s face seemed oddly like a rabbit.
Had that happened before? Steen had been looking at the moon when he killed that boy’s rabbit behind the Old Brewery. What, then? Archie couldn’t follow the thought. He jumped, hearing voices, but realized the sound was just the ringing in his ears from the blow to the head he’d suffered in the wreck.
Now that he’d stopped, the cold struck forcefully, biting through his johnny. Archie tied his shoes with numb fingers, knotting the laces when he couldn’t make the proper bows. I can’t stay out here all night dressed like this, he thought, fighting to stop his teeth from chattering; the temperature’s below freezing.
If he didn’t keep moving, he would die in this godforsaken ravine. The chacmool, if it even bothered to look, would find him blue and cold, and set about its arcane business without a care in the world. Well, it could go to flaming hell, Archie thought. His days of going passively mad and waiting for his death like a trussed hog for the knife were over.
He took Helen’s knife from the muddy valise and stood, chilled muscles groaning. He was soaked to the skin and shivering like a man with St. Vitus’s, and his head felt as if it were packed with nails, but his mind was clear. If he didn’t find a roof, and soon, he would die. And if the chacmool wanted to get between him and that roof, it would have to tear out his bleeding heart.
Archie began working his way down the ravine, favoring his swelling ankle. If he found a stream, eventually it would lead him to a farm, or even a town—if he wasn’t disemboweled first.
At the bottom of the ravine was a faint path, paralleling a rocky streambed swollen with early-spring meltwater. Archie hesitated over the stream, remembering stories of fugitive slaves who hid their scents in water; but he stepped over the narrow brook instead, both in an effort to stay as dry as he could and because of an inexplicable intuition that he should stay clear of running water. When he’d crossed, he looked downstream and noticed the figure straddling the brook.
Archie brandished the knife, resisting the urge to shout a challenge. Instead he waited for the chacmool to make its move. It was bigger and broader than he remembered, likely from all its meals of children’s hearts, and Archie stood where he was facing it down. Come on, you son of a bitch, he thought. I’ll spill your damned eztli on these stones.
The wind shifted, blowing up the ravine and lifting long straight hair away from the figure’s silhouette. But the mummy’s skull in the museum had only a patchy covering of curly hair like a mulatto’s, Archie remembered. Damn; if I could see its face I could be sure. But the moon was high and behind the figure, shadowing its features, and even as Archie readied himself to mount a limping charge, it looked up at the moon and disappeared into the cover of trees.
Archie immediately crossed back over the stream, keeping the water between himself and his pursuer. He started moving downstream again, staying clear of the water and looking warily across to the steep rocky slope on the other side of the brook. The chacmool had been looking right at him, or at least he thought it had. Perhaps by some trick of moonlight it had failed to see him.
No, he decided, that couldn’t be it. The beast had seen clearly enough in the museum with only the diffused glow of Barnum’s spotlight to go by.
A high-pitched yowl ripped through the still night from just upstream. Whirling to face it, Archie lost his balance as he swiped the knife at the air in front of him, expecting to see the chacmool changed into its feline demon-shape and dropping onto him from the trees. Instead he saw an Indian, facing upstream with both feet planted firmly in the center of the stream.
That’s who I saw before, Archie realized. God Almighty, he got upstream fast.
The Indian was beckoning to the trees, his long beaver coat waving in the night wind. Archie thought the Indian was speaking, but no sound reached his ears.
Faint shadows cast by the moon twisted and slithered away from the chacmool as it stalked reluctantly out onto the streambed, changed into the horror Archie had seen in Barnum’s museum. Its ears lay flat against its feline skull, and its lips, outlined by feathers rather than whiskers, were drawn back in a quavering snarl as it hunched before the Indian, spitting its anger.
The talisman lay cold and inert against Archie’s chest. The Indian’s faced it down, he thought wonderingly. Somehow he’s robbed it of its power.
A sound like distant thunder vibrated in the talisman as the chacmool’s form rippled, becoming nearly human. “Stand aside, Maskansisil,” it hissed, its forked tongue flicking out between jaguar’s fangs. “He is mine this night.”
The Indian stood his ground. “You own only your skin tonight, blood-drinker, and be grateful of that. These waters are mine, and this mountain. You will not pass.”
A long moment passed. Archie stood perfectly still. Finally the chacmool took a step back, the shadows around it shifting as if the moon wished to keep it in sight. “Your heart I will have for this, Maskansisil. I will drain your life and feed it to this mountain and these waters. You and I will not pass one another by again.” It spat into the rushing water at the Indian’s feet and vanished back into the trees, shambling awkwardly on still-crooked legs.
Archie let out a long shuddering breath and lowered the knife. Was this Indian really Maskansisil, the Pathfinder of Lenape legend? The name had come up in Burr’s ravings, but Archie hadn’t connected it with any real person. It had seemed more an honorific than a true name, a title given to a series of valiant men in Lenape history. But the chacmool had used the name without hesitation, had recognized the Indian standing before it with his feet anchored in frigid spring runoff.
And it had fled.
And here I am, Archie wondered. He felt foolish in his sodden johnny and muddy brogans, brandishing a kitchen knife and carrying the new leather valise in his other hand. What is my role i
n all of this?
He saw the Indian, Maskansisil, turn toward him and realized he’d spoken the question aloud.
“It is not my place to answer questions,” Maskansisil said softly, “only to bring you to the place where they may be answered.” He walked down the streambed to the spot where Archie had first seen him. From there he began climbing up the other side of the ravine. “If you seek answers, follow me,” he said over his shoulder.
Archie splashed across the stream and paused long enough to replace the knife in his valise so he would have a free hand. “Follow you where?” he said, working his way up a steep path between bare slabs of snowy granite. They seemed to be moving south, but his flight through the forest had thoroughly scrambled Archie’s sense of direction.
The path leveled out and widened as they climbed farther above the stream. Maskansisil moved quietly, visible only when the moonlight caught him through a break in the trees. The moon seemed to follow him, as if it wanted to keep him in sight as it had the chacmool.
He didn’t look back, and Archie was rapidly losing what remained of his strength. Toting oyster crates hadn’t prepared him for this sort of exertion, and his ankle was about to give way.
At the top of a narrow ridge, Archie realized he’d completely lost sight of the Indian. He turned in a circle, looking for a path and half expecting the chacmool to burst from the trees and gut him where he stood. God in Heaven, I hope I haven’t come all this way just to be killed at a more convenient spot, Archie thought. Perhaps I should just take my chances on being able to find my way back to Lemon House.
Alexander C. Irvine Page 20
