The Return

by Bentley Little

  She was so much more articulate than he was, and once again, Glen was impressed. She was a teacher, he thought; she made her living speaking to classes all day long. But that was only part of it. She was quicker on her feet than he was, and he decided in the future he would let her do the talking for the two of them.

  "May we come in?" Melanie asked.

  Alphonse thought for a moment, then opened the screen door. "I'll come out."

  Melanie moved back to let him through, and she and Glen followed him over to the wicker settee on the opposite end of the porch. "Have a seat," he offered. They'd been in the car for half the day, were tired of sitting and told him so. He seemed to have no intention of sitting down either, so all three of them ended up standing and leaning against the porch rail while they talked.

  "First things first," Melanie said. "Do you still have the mummy?"

  "No. I sold it. A month or so after I got it. You want to know the truth? That thing scared the hell out of me." He paused. "And it killed my dog."

  "It killed your dog?"

  Alphonse looked uncomfortable. "I believe so, yes. Although that's not something I would ever be able to prove."

  "How did it happen?"

  "I don't know. Not exactly. But Zelda was afraid of the mummy from the beginning, and she refused to stay in the same room with it, even if I was there with her. This went on for about a week or so. And then suddenly she disappeared. I was frantic! Zelda had never run out on me before, and I was sure it was because of that mummy. I had it moved out of my workroom here at the house and over to the shop. I put up lost doggie posters all over the neighborhood, and for two days I searched and searched, driving up and down the same streets, making twice-daily trips to the pound. Then on the third day, Zelda showed up. At the shop. I found her dead on the mummy's chest when I opened that morning. There wasn't a mark on her, and the vet said she died of natural causes. But how did she get from the house to the shop? How did she get in? And why did she crawl onto the chest of the mummy when that freakish thing terrified her?"

  Alphonse shook his head. "I had no answers for any of those questions. My own personal belief is that she died of fright--which to the vet would have looked like natural causes--although that still doesn't explain how she came to be there on that monster's chest in the back room of a locked antique store."

  This was the kind of stuff they were looking for, and Glen was filled with an unexpected sense of exhilaration. All previous confirmation of unusual occurrences had filled him with dread, left him feeling overwhelmed and impotent. But somehow this gave him hope. He didn't know why. It was a feeling, a vague intuition that they were going to find that mummy.

  "That's when you decided to sell it?" Melanie asked.

  Alphonse nodded. "Originally, I was going to keep it for myself. I was not only an antique dealer, I was--and am--a collector of antiquities. I have always been fascinated by ancient artifacts, and I have to admit, when I saw that beautifully bizarre mummy in that little two-bit carnival display, I simply had to have it. I'd let a genuine shrunken head slip through my fingers just the month before, and I was determined not to make that mistake again. But after I badgered Mr. . . ." He frowned.

  "Stewky," Melanie prompted.

  "Yes, Stewky. Well, all these peculiar things started happening. So after I buried Zelda, I put the word out and I would say rather aggressively tried to find a buyer. Which I did, about a week later."

  "You wouldn't happen to remember who you sold it to, would you?"

  "Sure," he said. "It was bought by a historical museum."

  "Where is it?"

  "McGuane."

  2

  "Women love the taste of minority genitalia," Ellis McCormack said to the white supremacists' answering machine. "They just . . . taste better than caucasian cocks. . . ." He hung up, not sure where to go with this, aware that his harassment of the bigots wasn't giving him the same lift it usually did.

  Because he was secretly a bigot, too?

  He wasn't, he knew, but his failure to consult with or even discuss what was going on with a single Native American haunted him, gnawed at him. He'd always considered himself a champion of much-maligned multi-culturalism. Hell, during the anti-Iranian demonstrations of the 1979-1980 school year, he'd been one of the only professors to stand up and defend the school's Arab students, arguing that they were not responsible for the policies of their governments. But he'd been born and raised in Arizona, and as much as he hated to admit it, he was unconsciously more dismissive of Native Americans.

  And Native American culture was his fucking field of expertise.

  He looked up at the shelf above his desk, at a Hopi Kachina doll bought at Second Mesa for an unconscionably low price. Swiveling around in his chair, he got up and poked his head out the door into the hall. At the opposite end of the corridor, John Campbell's door was open. The Navajo professor had finally arrived.

  Campbell was the department's newest addition, and while McCormack, as chair, had hired him, he had made almost no effort to get to know the instructor, other than in the most perfunctory way. He told himself it wasn't because the man was Native American--hell, he hadn't made an effort to get close to any of the hirees from the past three years, had he?--but a small nagging doubt couldn't help but point out that Campbell was the only instructor for whom he had not hosted a department meet-and-greet.

  McCormack had been thinking all morning about what he would say, trying to come up with a way to broach the subject. Part of the problem was that his mind was on his wife. The doctor said that she'd suffered no permanent physical damage, and Alyssa had assured him that she was all right, that she wanted to go back to work, needed to go back to work, but he could not forget the way she'd looked in that closet. The two of them should be taking time off--a few days, a week even--in order to talk this through.

  Instead, they'd gone back to their daily routine, and he'd spent half the morning worrying about her instead of thinking about what he should say to Campbell.

  Gathering his courage, McCormack started down the corridor. He wouldn't pussyfoot around, he decided. He'd speak plainly. Campbell would probably respect that more than some oblique attempt to ease his way into the subject.

  He reached the Navajo instructor's office, knocked on the metal door frame. "Hello, John?"

  Campbell swiveled around in his chair, surprised to be approached by the department head during his office hours. "Dr. McCormack."

  "I told you: Ellis."

  But had he told him? McCormack couldn't remember.

  "Ellis."

  There was a pause that started naturally, but quickly grew to uncomfortable length.

  McCormack cleared his throat. "I assume you've heard about this rash of unexplained phenomena that has reportedly occurred around Native American excavation sites and museums the past few weeks?"

  Reportedly? Why was he still hiding behind qualifiers, couching his words in vague generalities? What the hell was wrong with him? Already he was veering from the conversational course he had set for himself, retreating behind old instinct and bad habits.

  "Of course, I've heard about it."

  Was that condescension he heard in the other man's voice? Or scorn?

  McCormack pressed on quickly. "As you may or may not have heard, I and a few of our colleagues from related disciplines have been acting as consultants to local law enforcement in regard to the events at Scottsdale's Pima House Ruins. Although it now seems to have withdrawn or disappeared, we mapped out the parameters of a phenomenon we've been referring to as 'the vortex,' for want of a better word. Undetectable to the naked eye and virtually unmeasurable with conventional instrumentation, it was the area in which people, animals, and objects disappeared." He paused. "It occurred to me that as an anthropology instructor yourself and as a . . . Native American, you might be able to provide us with some additional insight. As you know, the study of indigenous peoples is my own area of expertise, but I thought you might be aware o
f pertinent myths, histories, or folk-tales that might be unfamiliar to me but could shed some light on what has been occurring."

  Campbell smiled thinly. "I don't have any secret mystical knowledge. I don't know what's going on. I don't think anyone does." He paused. "Except maybe Al."

  "Al's disappeared."

  "I heard that."

  "In an incident at his dig in Bower."

  "That's what I understand."

  Another awkward silence.

  Would Al have consulted with native scholars, with shamen and medicine men and tribal leaders? Truth be told, McCormack had never really respected Al Wittinghill's academic methods. He'd considered the man's ideas ridiculous, not even serious enough to be contemptible or heretical, and his pop-culture analytical approach was a joke, his conclusions uniformly suspect.

  But McCormack was big enough to admit when he was wrong, and he was trying to make up for past sins now.

  Only he wasn't quite sure how to do it.

  He cleared his throat again. He didn't need to, but the silence seemed to call for some type of prefatory noise. "Al, as I'm sure you know, was working on some sort of unified theory to explain the Anasazi . . . disappearances, as he called them. Although as far as I know, he had not revealed the details of that theory to anyone other than his partner Dr. Henry. I think it was clear from his writings and his speeches, however, that his explanation involved a supernatural component and was not really in line with scholarly thinking on the matter."

  "I thought you didn't agree with him on that subject," Campbell said. "At least, that's what Al told me."

  McCormack faked a smile, trying to stifle his natural instincts and not become defensive. "I didn't, I didn't. But recent events have forced me to reevaluate my opinions."

  "I'm sorry. I'm afraid Al didn't share his theory with me, either. I think he was waiting for publication."

  "I understand that. I was simply wondering if he had solicited any input from you, if he had asked you about any, ah, personal data you might have."

  "No."

  "I see."

  McCormack thought about Alyssa, the state of the house when they found her. This was happening all over, to Native Americans as well--whatever was behind it did not discriminate as to race--and it was impossible to believe that one or more of the tribes were not attacking this from their own end, putting their own teams on it and utilizing the knowledge of their shamen or scholars or folklorists. Would Campbell know if that were the case? Would Campbell tell him if it was?

  "We'll be out there at Pima House again this morning, mopping up as it were. Afterward, we'll be investigating the adjoining neighborhood where an estimated fifty-four people are missing."

  Estimated.

  "Would you like to . . . come with us?" he concluded lamely.

  Campbell met his gaze. "No, I'm busy." He swiveled his chair around, and McCormack could no longer see his face. "But thanks for asking."

  3

  Cameron stared out the motel room window at the fenced-off pool, where the children of tourists jumped off the diving board and played "Marco Polo." Behind him, his Uncle Vince was on the phone to someone, talking in low hushed tones because he didn't want Cameron to hear.

  He wondered what had happened to his parents. And Jay and his family. And Stu and Melinda and their mom. And Mr. Green and Mrs. Dilbay and Mr. Finch and everyone else. He knew they were probably dead, knew it intellectually, but it didn't really feel that way to him; emotionally it still wasn't registering.

  That was good, he decided. Otherwise, he'd be spending all his time crying and feeling sorry for himself. This way, his thoughts were on finding them, getting them back, figuring out what was going on.

  He'd learned a lot listening to Uncle Vince and his friends. This wasn't just some isolated occurrence, and it wasn't something that had followed him down from the scout ranch. The monster he'd seen was part of a much larger pattern happening all over the state, maybe all over the country. He was relieved to discover that everything was not revolving around him, that he was not some sort of catalyst. At the same time, that meant that the simple, easy explanation to which he'd been clinging, the hope that killing or vanquishing the Mogollon Monster would put an end to it all, was incorrect. That was as scary as anything that had happened so far.

  His uncle got off the phone.

  "Who was that?"

  "Dr. McCormack."

  "What were you guys talking about?"

  "You know."

  "Oh."

  "There's nothing new, though." Vince unwrapped the last plastic cup and got a drink of water from the sink. "We should probably go out for a while, do something, give the maid a chance to clean up in here."

  "Is Dr. McCormack at my house?"

  Vince shook his head. "He's going over later, after work. They're still looking around, the police and everyone, but he's at ASU."

  "You were talking pretty quietly there."

  "Yeah."

  "There's no reason to keep anything from me, you know. I'm in this as deep as you are. I took a picture of that monster. I was chased by dust devils that looked like Mom and Dad. I can handle it."

  "You're right."

  "So what were you really talking about?"

  "Nothing new. He talked to a Navajo professor and called the Hopi and Navajo governments, but they're as baffled as we are. Or at least that's what they told him. He thinks they might be trying to fight this on their own, in their own way, and just don't want to tell him." Vince poured the last of his water into the sink. "I hope so. I really do."

  Cameron was silent for a moment. "What do you think is causing all this, making everyone disappear, making that pottery and stuff attack people?"

  "I don't know. None of us do."

  "Do you think it's that monster I took a picture of?"

  "Maybe. That seems to be the best lead we have so far."

  Cameron licked his lips. "I heard you guys talking, you know. Earlier. Mr. Ridgeway said there were old Indian pictures and carvings and things of that monster."

  "Yeah."

  Cameron paused. An idea had just occurred to him. "Did the Indians have some kind of story about the Mogollon Monster? The scout masters said they did, but that might've just been, you know, for us."

  Vince sat down on the bed next to him. "I don't know, champ. Why?"

  "At first, when all that stuff started happening to me, after Scoutmaster Anderson died, I thought it was the Mogollon Monster. I thought he'd followed me back down to Scottsdale. But then I thought that was just a story and this was something else, some . . . I don't know.

  "But maybe it was the Mogollon Monster." Cameron saw that he had piqued his uncle's interest and kept going. "Maybe this thing inspired all those stories. I mean, it's hairy. What I saw in Jay's house wasn't big, but Mr. Ridgeway said that skull he found was big. Maybe it's like a race of these things, and I saw a baby or a kid or dwarf or something. Those old Indians and loggers and trappers and whatever, if they saw it in the forest and it killed some of 'em, they probably spread the word and it turned into the Mogollon Monster and Bigfoot--"

  "Sasquatch," Vince said.

  "Whatever. But if Indians made all those pictures and carvings, they were obviously afraid of this thing, too."

  His uncle nodded thoughtfully.

  "I told you, when it passed by my cabin and when I saw it in the backyard, I was frozen, I couldn't move."

  "It radiates some type of power," Vince mused. "That's what froze you up, that's what corrupts the animals, the pets, that's what . . . draws people."

  Cameron nodded excitedly. "I could feel it when me and Jay went over to the ruins. The same thing. And the closer you got, the stronger it got, and when you moved back to a certain point, it stopped, like you were out of range or something."

  "What about when you took the picture of it? You weren't frozen then."

  "Not exactly. I felt it, that same thing, but it wasn't strong enough to stop me. Maybe he'd used up a
ll his power getting rid of everyone."

  Vince punched his shoulder lightly, approvingly. "Good thinking, Cam. You might be on to something here. I'll call Mr. Ridgeway and Dr. McCormack and talk to them about it. I'm not sure they're thinking along those lines. Dr. McCormack, at least, seems to believe it's some type of wormhole phenomenon. A wormhole is--"

  Cameron snorted. "I know what a wormhole is."

  Vince raised his eyebrows.

  "Star Trek."

  "Right. Well, he's thinking some wormhole-type thing opens up, lets these things in, draws our people through, and happens every hundred years or so. But that's . . . too big. Too general. It doesn't explain all these small things that are happening, all these personal things. It doesn't explain what I saw in Springerville, with those guys on the ridge all dressed up in primitive costumes and those people from town going up to collect those artifacts the next day. But if that skull still had some of the power that you're talking about . . ." Vince smiled thinly. "I think we're on to something here."

  Cameron's excitement was beginning to fade. He thought of that bushy-haired creature. It had stood on the bed without making any indentation, and it had disappeared without leaving the house. It had also made everyone in his whole neighborhood disappear and had used his parents to . . . play with him.

  He remembered his parents sitting on the couch, staring at the dead TV screen, his mom nodding, his dad laughing.

  How could they hope to stop something like that? How could they kill it? It had been around for centuries, maybe even longer, and had wiped out entire races of people. What could they possibly do to stop it?

  "Are we going to die?" Cameron asked.

  His uncle looked surprised. "No, of course not."

  "Everyone else is gone, everyone on my street, all my friends. Mom and Dad. It's not that far-fetched."

  "But you're here, right?" Vince stopped suddenly, his eyes widening. "You're here," he repeated. He looked at Cameron. "What if you're immune?" he said. "You made it through your scout camp. You made it through what happened in your neighborhood. What if it hasn't killed you because it can't? What if you're somehow resistant to this power, this creature, whatever it is?"