The Return

by Bentley Little

  Melanie wished the word was spreading like wildfire, that news organizations were informing the world, and that the government was recruiting from the best and the brightest, the top minds in a variety of interconnected fields, to find out what was happening here and how to stop it. It would be comforting to know that they could relax, that the big boys were on the case and the three of them didn't have to worry about the fate of . . . what? Some Indian ruins and excavation sites? The Southwest? The entire country?

  More and more, she felt the weight of responsibility on her shoulders.

  "Do you think we could see these Pima House ruins for ourselves?" Glen asked.

  No, Melanie thought.

  "That's why I asked you here. Let's go."

  They saw the police cars and the helicopters from blocks away. Melanie felt a gnawing pain in the hollow pit of her stomach as they passed a crowd of excited onlookers standing before a barricade of temporary chain-link fence. McCormack drove his car up to a long sawhorse blocking the entrance to an adjacent parking lot, showed a policeman manning the entryway an ID card, and the sawhorse was moved aside so they could drive through.

  There were a lot of onlookers, much more than there should have been for an incident that essentially had been stagnant for several days. They were animated, enthusiastic, as though they were attending some sort of revival meeting or entertainment event. She got out of her car, and heard the buzz of conversations from the assembled individuals. The mood of the crowd was what concerned her the most. They chose to be here, seemed to like being here, and there was something disturbing about their interest in such a deadly and horribly alien phenomenon.

  Within the fenced boundary, the eroded remnants of the Anasazi buildings and the paths leading to them were cordoned off with yellow police ribbon. From somewhere inside came a low, intermittently thunderous growl, as though the earth itself were snarling at something. McCormack walked up to a uniformed officer standing next to the ribbon under a mesquite tree, consulting the top page of a sheaf of papers on the clipboard he carried.

  "Rand," McCormack said in greeting.

  The policeman nodded. "Professor."

  "How goes it? Any change?"

  "None."

  "Have they finished mapping it yet?"

  "If they have, no one's told me. Haven't even seen Sabian or Chang today."

  "Some of our physicists and physical scientists are trying to determine the size, shape, and exact position of this vortex or whatever it is," McCormack explained. "If they can get a three-dimensional picture of it, computer-model it, they might be able to extrapolate from there and figure out some of its other properties. They started out with lasers and light beams, but there's no spectral anomaly; using those techniques, you can't even tell it exists. Light passes through unbent and untouched. So they went the low-tech route and threw a ball with an attached string. The string was cut off at the point of entry and Dr. Chang, who was holding the other end, got a shock--like a kick in the chest, he said--although string is nonconductive and there was no evidence of anything unusual on any of the string's fibers. They then threw ball and string, with the end tied to a stationary object, but for some reason, there was always a recoil and they could never precisely determine where the vanishing point was. Now they're tracking some sort of sensory projectile, an electronic mapping device ordinarily used underwater that feeds back data to a computer up until the second it disappears, and this seems to work, although the parameters of the vanishing point keep changing. They're not expanding or contracting . . . just moving. Shifting back and forth, Dr. Sabian says, and that's the theory they're working on now."

  Melanie looked over the yellow ribbon, saw only paved paths winding between a benign-looking ruin. She shivered.

  "How big do they estimate it is?" Glen asked.

  "The size of a football field," McCormack said.

  They were silent for a moment, looking at the site. Melanie glanced over at the crowd behind the fence. They wanted to get in, she thought. They wanted to experience it for themselves. They wanted to disappear.

  And they were excited about it.

  "Hey!" a policeman yelled behind them.

  They all turned toward the parking lot, where a sleek orange cat ran across the asphalt from a neighboring yard, away from a pursuing policeman. The cat passed McCormack's car, darted between them, dashed under the police ribbon up the path--and vanished.

  Rand snapped his pen and made a check on his clipboard. "Fifth one today," he said. "Fifth cat. Twelfth animal overall."

  Melanie looked at the spot where the cat had disappeared, thought about Al and Judi and Randy and Buck. "Let's get out of here," she said, feeling sick to her stomach. "I've seen enough."

  Glen nodded solemnly. "Me, too. Let's go."

  Glen paced the terra-cotta floor of the McCormacks' ultra-large living room, trying to think, but his thoughts were muddled, his brain overloaded. He glanced out the tall twin windows at beautiful desert landscaping: saguaros and ocotillos surrounded by smaller bushier plants punctuated with the brightly colored flowers characteristic of drought-resistant vegetation. It was an exceptionally nice house, particularly for a college professor. McCormack's wife, he'd found out, worked for APS and was the real breadwinner of the family. The two of them were in one of the back rooms right now, no doubt arguing over McCormack's invitation for them to stay at his place.

  "Sit down," Melanie suggested. "You're making me nervous."

  He was making himself nervous. This should be the point where he and Melanie simply bowed out gracefully and let the authorities take it from here. He might have found the skull in Bower and the two of them might have run into some strange shit in New Mexico, but anthropology professors were looking into this now. And physics professors. And cops. All of them using their resources and considerable expertise to figure out what was happening and do something about it.

  So why did he feel that he needed to stay involved?

  Part of the reason was the triptychs in that church and those pieces of pottery with Melanie's face and house. The two of them were involved, whether they liked it or not. They had not asked to be drawn in, but strange events had been personalized to include them, and it was clear that they had been specifically chosen.

  But part of it also was that he could not walk away, could not just cede his role to someone else. He'd been there at the beginning and he was going to see this through to the end.

  Melanie, he knew, felt the same way.

  Besides, one of those church paintings showed a line of people walking into a white light. What was that if not the vortex at Pima House? And subsequent panels depicted him battling that strange frizzy-haired demon, a boy at his side. If those prophesies were to be believed--and they'd been frighteningly on target so far--then he was going to be here all the way through.

  Melanie was not in the pictures.

  He pushed that thought out of his mind.

  He turned toward her. "We didn't pick up our photos," he said. "The ones from New Mexico."

  "Damn! You're right." She hit the arm of the couch with a fist. "We could've shown them to Dr. McCormack."

  "After we get back," he said. "We'll send him copies."

  But Glen realized that he didn't expect to go back. That was strange. What did he think they were going to do? Live in the McCormacks' guest room forever? Buy a house in Phoenix and settle down? Head back to California? It didn't make any sense. Of course, they were going back to Bower. Tomorrow, probably. Even if they did decide to go somewhere else, Melanie would have to return home for her clothes and belongings.

  Unless she couldn't go back.

  Unless she was dead.

  She wasn't in the paintings.

  He was going to make himself crazy thinking in circles like this.

  McCormack and his wife emerged from the hallway, hand in hand. They had been fighting about the professor's impulsive invitation, he could tell, but they'd decided to put on a united front, and Mrs.
McCormack--Alyssa--smiled at them. "I'm glad you'll be staying with us."

  Melanie stood. "If you're sure it's not an inconvenience."

  "I'm the one who's inconvenienced you," the professor said. "I made you come down here. The least I can do is offer you a place to stay."

  "It's fine," Alyssa said, and her voice was sincere. "We're glad to have you."

  McCormack beamed at his wife.

  She let go of his hand, patted his arm. "I'm going to start dinner."

  He looked surprised. "You don't want to--?"

  "--discuss disappearing people for the thousandth time?" she finished for him. "No thanks." She nodded to Glen and Melanie. "Hope you like Mexican food."

  "We do," Melanie said. "That'll be great. Thank you."

  "Let's go into my study," McCormack said as his wife went into the kitchen. "I have photos Al compiled from previous summers' digs and a bunch of maps he gave me. I've been looking through them since the Bower police called me, but haven't been able to find anything in them that sheds any light on what we're dealing with. You two are new. Maybe you can come at this from a fresh perspective, pick up on something that eluded me."

  They followed him through a hallway as wide as a room, into his study, a gigantic home office with a skylight, a wall of windows and the type of built-in book-shelves that Glen had seen only in movies. Maps and photo albums were piled on the oversize desk, and as McCormack started to explain where Al and last year's team had conducted their excavation, Glen's gaze landed on the nearest map and the word "Springerville."

  "Vince," he said.

  Melanie frowned. "Vince? Who's Vince?"

  "He's the guy who got me into this to begin with. He's another friend of Al's, and he gives tours to these ruins near Springerville. What are they called?" He squinted at the map, trying to find the name.

  "Which ones? Casa Malpais? Huntington Mesa?"

  "Huntington Mesa! That's it. I took the tour and he recruited me for the Bower dig. He seemed to be pretty tight with Al, and I'd be willing to bet Al's shared some of his theories. He might be able to help us out."

  McCormack frowned. "Vince . . ." he repeated. "Vince . . . I don't think I know any Vince."

  "He's young. Probably an ex-student. What I was thinking was, I could call him, tell him what's going on, see if he knows anything about it or has any theories--"

  "Use my phone," McCormack said, pushing it across the desk.

  The professor only had phone books for the Phoenix metropolitan area, so Glen got the number for the Huntington Mesa museum by calling information. Vince wasn't there, but when Glen lied and said he was a friend and it was an emergency, the elderly woman who answered the phone gave him the number of Vince's apartment.

  Vince picked up on the fourth ring. "Hello?"

  "I don't know if you remember me. My name's Glen Ridgeway. I took a tour of your ruins last month, and you hooked me up with Al Wittinghill at the Bower excavation?"

  "Oh, yeah. Hi." The young man's voice sounded different. Distracted, disassociated.

  "I, uh, I've been working there since then, and, uh . . . something's happened," Glen admitted. "Actually, quite a bit's happened."

  Suddenly Vince sounded interested. "Really?"

  "Weird shit."

  "Are you there now?"

  "No. I'm in Scottsdale."

  "Oh, weird shit? I know what you're talking about. The Pima House Ruins, right?"

  "That's part of it--"

  "My sister called and told me. Her family lives close by there, and she's worried it's going to spread. I don't know what she thinks I can do, but I have a few days coming to me, and I was going to come there tomorrow and see it for myself." There was a pause. "Actually, something happened here, too. Something like that."

  "Al's missing," Glen blurted out. "It's happening everywhere."

  "Al? Shit. What happened?"

  For what seemed like the hundredth time, he went through the whole story from the beginning, starting with the weird artifacts found before his arrival in Bower, ending with this afternoon's trip to the Pima House Ruins.

  Vince was silent when he finished, and for a second Glen thought he had hung up. "Hello?" he said. "Vince? You still there?"

  "I'm here."

  He didn't say anything else, and Glen looked at Melanie and McCormack with an I-don't-know-what's-going-on expression.

  When Vince spoke again, it was in that distracted, disassociated monotone. "We had a break-in at the museum, or we thought we had a break-in, and I spent two nights sleeping there trying to catch the guy. I only heard noises the first night. But on the second night all hell broke loose. The artifacts were . . . alive. Some of them attacked me and some of them escaped. I followed the escapees outside and down the highway. They went right down the highway, two stone statues leading and a bunch of smaller stuff following. They eventually made their way through the desert outside of town and walked up to the top of Huntington Mesa, back to the ruins where we found them.

  "I filmed all this on digital, and I e-mailed it to Al last night . . . although I guess he didn't get it since he's not there. I can e-mail it to you, too, let you see what happened. It's dark and some of it's unclear, but overall it's pretty good. It's not like those UFO films. You don't have to interpret what's happening. You can see."

  "Do you have an e-mail address?" Glen asked McCormack. "He has some digital video he wants to send us of what happened in Springerville.

  " 'DrMcCormack,' no period. The 'at' sign. Then 'Freelink.com.' I'm not sure my computer's equipped to handle video, but we can try it."

  Glen repeated the address.

  "Okay, I'll send it. But I'll bring a copy tomorrow just in case you can't access it." Vince paused. "Some other stuff happened, too. After I shut off the camera. I ran into this old--Navajo man, I think he was--and he was just sitting there on a boulder, watching and getting drunk. We saw people on top of the mesa all dressed up in feathers and masks and rags, like ancient tribal people, and the old man called them 'The Others.' He said he'd never seen them before and didn't know what The Others were, but he knew they were 'The Others,' and then he just sort of wandered away.

  "Of course, I didn't go up there. I went back home. But the next morning, I drove to the ruins, and there were people up top, people from Springerville. They were all dressed up like they were going to church, and they were digging in the ground, looking for something. The trees around the ruins were all shredded and there were big claw prints on the ground, like some monster had stormed through there.

  "I went to the front kiva, the one I showed you, and at the bottom were the artifacts from the museum. And a skeleton. You found a skull with no body in Bower? This was a body with no skull. I don't know if it's the same creature, or if there's any connection at all, but the people started going down into the kiva and picking up the artifacts. They climbed back up and took them home, and at the end the only thing left was that headless skeleton.

  "I haven't been up there since. I've been afraid."

  Glen felt cold just listening to the story. He remembered perfectly the Springerville museum and the Huntington Mesa ruins and could visualize everything Vince was describing. "I think we have a lot to talk about."

  "I'll be in the Valley tomorrow afternoon. Why don't I give you a call when I get there? Do you have a number you'll be at?"

  Glen gave him the number of Melanie's cell phone. The two of them said good-bye and hung up.

  "He's coming to Scottsdale tomorrow. He'll give us a call when he gets here."

  "You think he can help?" Melanie asked.

  No, Glen thought, but he shrugged noncommittally. "I don't know. I hope so."

  "All right," McCormack said. "We're on our way." He opened up a photo album. "Now, let's look at these pictures."

  2

  It was all coming to a head.

  He didn't know how he knew it, but he did.

  George Black stared at the collection of pottery shards he'd gathered fr
om the yard the past few days, the ones with pictures of him, Melanie, the house, the Weird Man. He hadn't told his daughter about them, hadn't even told Margaret. He'd kept them there, hidden away in the locked bottom drawer of his desk, taking them out only when he was sure he was alone.

  But that was nothing unusual, and he shouldn't feel guilty about it. There were a lot of things he'd never told his daughter, never told his wife. Everyone knew about his grandfather, of course. But he'd successfully erased that stigma, had forged a new identity for himself, based solely on his own qualities rather than the actions of previous generations. And one of the ways he'd done so was by service to his country. He'd been a hero in Korea, the most decorated infantryman Bower had produced.

  That was one of his secrets, though, wasn't it?

  He supposed everyone knew what those medals and commendations really meant. The decorations meant that he'd killed a lot of people. His government had trained him and provided him with equipment and transportation to another country, where he'd been ordered to murder people with dark skin and slanty eyes. But what the medals didn't tell was how much he'd liked killing those people. He'd murdered one North Korean sergeant with his bare hands and a rock, smashing his head repeatedly until it cracked open like a melon and all the blood and juices poured onto the dirt. Another he'd gut-shot from an inch away, feeling the hot gush of blood on his hand, hearing the wet sluicing sound of bullets rending flesh.

  Why was he thinking about this now?

  Because of the pottery.

  He reached down to grasp the warm dusty clay, and the pictures responded to his touch. The Weird Man popped up in the house window, winked at him. Melanie stood mournfully in the open doorway. On another rounded fragment, a line of severed heads stretched along the top of the backyard fence. A small thumb-size piece of pottery showed a wild staring eyeball.

  He'd been feeling strange lately. Not out of sorts but . . . different, as though he was changing, not quite the same person he had been. It was a stupid idea, but he couldn't seem to shake it, and it was all tied up with the pottery, with the pieces of broken, patterned clay he had found in his yard. It was almost like the pottery was radioactive and he was being contaminated by it.