"My wife must have woken up and seen it standing next to her," McCormack said. "All of a sudden, she was screaming and climbing over me, and then I woke up and saw it, and we both ran out." He ran a hand through his wild sleep-tousled hair. "Jesus. What does it want?"
"They know we're after them," Glen said. "Now they're after us."
"They can't hurt us," Vince said. "We're immune."
McCormack shook his head, eyes still wide with fear. "It doesn't look like we are."
"I guess it's time to find out." Vince looked at Glen. "Put some pants and shoes on. I'll get my Nikes. We'll carry it outside."
"And bury it," Melanie said. She'd walked up with Alyssa and the two of them stood a few steps down the hall. "That'll inactivate its power."
Glen explained what they'd been discussing. "I'm thinking we should try to electrocute it," he said. "Do a test run. It's what we'll have to do anyway, at least according to those church paintings." He looked around. "Anyone have any ideas?"
"You could put it in a bathtub filled with water and then throw a radio or something in," Cameron suggested. "I saw that in a movie."
"I have a better idea," McCormack proposed. "There's a portable generator in the garage. I used to use it to run equipment at remote digs. We could try to shock it with that."
"That might work."
"Do it outside," Alyssa said, and her voice was quiet, shaky, on the verge of tears. "Don't do it in the house."
Glen nodded.
"We'll do it out back," McCormack promised.
They got the generator out of the garage, tested it to make sure it ran, and found a place in the desert behind the house, a flat area with sand and no vegetation in case there was some sort of fire. They worked in shifts, one of the men keeping an eye on the mummy at all times, but it remained standing impassively by the side of the bed.
McCormack had gloves, and Glen and Vince put them on before taking the ancient body outside. It was long after midnight, and carrying the preserved corpse of a supernaturally powerful creature into the moonlit desert made Glen feel as though he were part of a weird religious cult.
They placed the mummy on the sand, on its back. McCormack already had the generator running. The professor had cranked up the maximum output and attached two accessory cords with clamps that looked like a car's jumper cables. "Stand back," he said. Holding the two cables, McCormack crouched at the foot of the mummy and touched one to each shriveled foot.
The mummy disappeared.
There was no burning, no sizzling, no frying of orange hair, not even a satisfying electrical pop or a fading cry of fettered rage. The figure simply vanished, leaving nothing behind, not even an imprint in the sand. McCormack put down the cables, turned off the generator, and picked up his flashlight. All three of them searched the immediate area for signs of any residue. Nothing. It was as if the mummy had never existed.
"It works," Vince said wonderingly.
Glen felt as surprised as Vince sounded. He'd thought electricity was the key, but he hadn't believed this experiment would actually accomplish anything. There was no way he believed that their first attempt would make the monster disappear.
But it did.
Inside the house, Melanie was still consoling Alyssa, and Cameron was watching television. The men came back in to explain what had happened. Alyssa seemed not to want to hear, but Cameron immediately turned off the TV, and both he and Melanie listened intently.
Melanie, in particular, was very excited by the news. "We can stop them," she said. "All we need to do now is find out where they are and attack them."
"I think we need to go back to the area around the scout ranch," Vince said. "I think that's the key."
Glen shook his head. "I don't think so."
Vince looked at him askance. "One of them went right by Cam's cabin and killed his scoutmaster. When we went there, we found signs of them in that old train tunnel. That's where they live."
"Maybe. But Melanie suggested that we should be looking at something more obvious, that we've overlooked, and I think she's right."
"Let's look at Al's map," McCormack said. "We'll figure this out."
They followed the professor into his study. Moonlight shone on the oversize desk in the center of the room, streaming in through the skylight. McCormack flipped a switch, and the office was illuminated in soft white. One of Al's maps had been tacked onto a large corkboard since the last time Glen had been in here, and there were lines and markings all over it, pictures posted all around it.
Glen walked up to the map, which covered the Four Corners states. The marks and lines indicated where incidents had occurred.
"There are probably other events we don't know about or that haven't been reported," McCormack said, "but these are the important ones."
"You haven't added Albuquerque," Glen noted. "Or Denver."
"No." McCormack withdrew a black marking pen from the desk and made two big black dots over those two cities.
"It makes a triangle," Cameron said.
"You're right." Melanie traced the pattern of accumulated dots and circles and marks with her finger. "It's lopsided, but it's there."
"Like the Devil's triangle," Glen said drily. "That's appropriate."
She touched his shoulder. "Do you notice something?"
"What?"
"Look at the center of the triangle, the spot that's equidistant from all sides and angles."
"I don't see what you're . . ." He frowned, looked closer. "Oh, my God."
It was the empty New Mexican village with the abandoned church. Although it was not listed on the map, the center of the triangle was located at the spot where the small town should have been.
Not listed on the map?
There was no such thing anymore as an unmapped town.
He was filled with both dread and excitement. This was the place. He remembered the feeling he'd had in the church, that it was a Christian site but had been built upon something older, something primitive, something frightening and unknowable.
"It was under our noses," he told Melanie.
"Yes." She nodded. "If only we'd discovered it sooner."
"Let's go," Vince said. "What are we waiting for?"
"What? Now?" McCormack looked over at the closed blinds, obviously thinking about the hour.
"It's a long trip--"
"Nine hours," Glen said. "Eight if we speed."
"--and who knows what could happen in that time? Look what's happened in the last twenty-four. Bower's gone, the mummy's returned . . . I don't think we have time to waste."
"I don't either," Melanie said.
Glen and Cameron nodded.
"We're going to have to take two vehicles." McCormack pointed at Vince. "We'll put the generator in your truck, so you'll have to drive."
"Not a problem."
"Everyone else can come with me."
"I'm going with my uncle," Cameron announced.
Vince smiled at his nephew, punched his shoulder lightly.
"Let's get ready to go, then. We'll pick up some extra gas on the way. Who knows how long we'll have to run that generator?"
Glen grabbed his wallet and keys from the guest room, ran a quick comb through his hair, then called Pace, who was asleep, but became instantly wide awake when Glen explained what had happened and what they were going to do. "We need your help," he said.
"You've got it."
"Then meet us in Gallup," he told Pace. "We'll pick you up on the way."
4
They saw the sun rise over Winslow.
It was a beautiful sight, Glen thought, made even more so by the possibility that it might be his last. The remnants of a late night summer storm stretched over the eastern sky, and the clouds that had already turned from black to gray were shifting from orange to pink on their way to white. The rundown buildings in the by-passed town looked cinematically picturesque, bathed in the rosy glow of the dawning day.
He had become increasingly less cert
ain of the outcome of this encounter as they sped through the desert darkness toward New Mexico. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that the final painting in the church tryptich did not depict the defeat of the orange-haired figure. The figure was screaming, yes, and he'd assumed it was with agony, but maybe it was rage. Maybe the electricity was only angering the monster. He could not say for certain because he had only memory to rely upon.
Why the hell hadn't they picked up their developed photos?
Why hadn't they used a Polaroid like Cameron?
Electricity had worked on the mummy, he told himself. The painting had steered them right on that. It would work again with the living creatures.
But he could not make himself believe it, and he reached for Melanie's hand and held it tightly.
They'd taken two vehicles, Vince and Cameron driving in Vince's pickup with the generator, he and Melanie riding in McCormack's BMW with the professor and his wife. Alyssa was subdued. In fact, she had not seemed herself since the attack. He hadn't gotten to know her well, but the confident loquacious woman they had met the first day was long gone, and in her place was a cowed jittery ghost who barely spoke. He recalled the piece of broken pottery he'd picked up that had depicted Alyssa's attack and then showed an assault on Melanie. Had that been a threat or a prediction or merely an effort to frighten him off? He didn't know but, since then, the image had never been far from his mind.
They passed Winslow, heading into the sun.
Shortly after they'd hit the road, McCormack had used his cell phone to call Captain Ortiz. The captain's jurisdiction was Scottsdale and they were way past Scottsdale, but the professor told him exactly where they were going and what they were doing and asked him to pass the news along to the FBI or whatever federal agency was investigating the disappearance of Bower. Glen hoped when they arrived at the town they would find a phalanx of tanks and cop cars and official government vehicles, with crack teams of scientists and sharpshooters all ready to give the monsters what for. But he knew that was unlikely. Even if the representatives of law enforcement got to the town before they did, there was nothing those people would be able to do.
They weren't immune.
They weren't depicted in the painting.
They passed the free petrified wood and the dinosaur bones, the stucco pyramid and Nate Stewky's SEE THE AZTEC MUMMY! sign. He felt a nostalgic twinge as he thought of their trip through Stewky's homegrown museum. It had only been a few days ago, but it felt like a lifetime.
Pace said he'd be waiting at "The Best Damn Donut Shop in Gallup," and there was indeed a donut shop with that name just off the highway on the west end of town. Pace was in his pickup in the parking lot, eating a jelly donut and drinking coffee, and at Glen's direction, McCormack pulled up next to him. After a quick bathroom break for everyone and a short stop at a gas station, they were on their way again, Pace's truck the third and final vehicle in the caravan.
Three, he thought. Three paintings in each tryptich. A triangle has three sides. Six of them had immunity: two times three. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Three. Christ denied thrice. Three . . . three . . .
The lack of sleep caught up with him and he dozed, lulled by the gentle motion of the car and the repetitive thoughts in his mind. When Melanie gently shook him awake two hours later, they were passing through Albuquerque. Or what was left of it. Several large fires burned in different parts of the city, and the freeway was strewn with abandoned cars and dozens of dead animals. In the sky, odd-looking crows spiraled up above a tall rectangular building that appeared to be slowly melting. Pace was right. This was a nightmare. He didn't know what else he'd missed along the way--he'd slept through it--but from the tense atmosphere in the car, he was pretty sure it had been bad.
They were getting close.
"Which way from here?" McCormack asked tersely. Next to him, Alyssa sat silently in the passenger seat, almost curled into a ball.
Glen didn't remember exactly, but he examined the map the professor handed back and directed him to the correct northbound road.
Once again, they traveled through the increasingly rural countryside, past the small primitive villages where he and Melanie had seen dark-skinned people riding horses instead of cars, past dirt roads and adobe buildings and open fields and wooden farmhouses. They saw no people this time, no animals either, and the world seemed still, as though frozen in a moment of time.
Then they were over a ridge, down a rise, winding through trees and into the river-carved valley where they'd stopped in that unnamed village for gas and found the abandoned church.
Only the church was no longer there.
The village was no longer there.
Where the gas station and the restaurant and the houses and the church should have been stood a hideous hellish structure that appeared to be made of dirty rusted metal, a sprawling monstrosity that looked like a demon's house designed by a lunatic. To either side of it, alternating scenes kept winking in and out of existence: bucolic countryside, poor but picturesque village, craggy canyon wall, fire-ravaged forest. In front were three large holes in the ground, ringed with human skulls.
Three.
This was clearly a place of power. Glen could sense it. Cameron was right, the air did feel liquid. But he was not paralyzed. His senses seemed heightened, sight, smell, and hearing all operating far beyond their ordinary capabilities and sending his brain information that was almost too detailed to process.
All three vehicles stopped in the center of the road in front of this fantastic sight, and everyone save Alyssa got out. She remained curled up in the passenger seat of McCormack's car, eyes closed, asleep or desperately trying to sleep.
Glen looked more carefully at the quickly flickering scenes on either side of the horrible building. In one, he thought he saw a downed helicopter in the background. In another, business-suited agents and camouflaged soldiers wandered between trees and through bushes, looking frightened.
The feds had gotten here before they did.
The six of them were still standing, facing the structure. So far nothing had happened, but even if the rest of them could resist this power, Alyssa could not, and Glen turned toward McCormack. "Get her out of here!" he ordered. "Get in the car and drive back to the last town. We'll meet you there later. After."
He'd expected an argument, but the professor understood instantly. Wishing them luck, he ran around the front of the car. "I'll call on the cell phone," he announced. "Keep the line open so I can hear what happens."
Glen nodded his assent, and a minute after the BMW had turned around and headed back up the road, Melanie's phone rang. She answered, then clipped it on her belt. "Lot of money for a walkie-talkie," she said.
Glen smiled, put his arm around her, held her close. He had never loved her more than at this moment, had never loved anyone as much, and there was a sudden ache in his heart that made him feel like crying. He forced those feeling away and turned toward Pace. "Have any other ideas?" he asked.
The other man scratched his beard and shook his head. "I wish I did," he said. "But we're in uncharted territory here. Aside from bringing in earth movers and bulldozers and burying that whole damn thing under a mountain of dirt, I guess your plan's about the best we have. But . . ."
"What?"
"I wish we'd brought more generators. Maybe a stun gun or two. More electricity. I think it would be better if we all went in, armed to the teeth and ready to do battle."
"You guys weren't in the painting."
"I understand that. But that painting also only showed one creature. Maybe while you were taking care of that one, the rest of us were out of the frame, doing the same thing to the rest."
Glen hadn't thought of that.
"You need someone to watch your back in there."
In there.
It hit him all of a sudden that he would be inside that infernal edifice. He looked up at the grimy rusted walls and tried to imagine what lay within them, but could n
ot. He had no idea what he would find in that place, but he knew it was horrifying.
Vince was already unloading the generator from the back of his pickup, and Glen helped him lift it down off the gate. Pace started digging through the back of his own truck, pulling out a coiled length of well-used rope and a pair of heavy-duty flashlights. Cameron stood nearby, looking away from the dark building at the trees on the opposite side of the road. He seemed much more subdued than usual and had not said a single word since they'd arrived.
In the thick air, currents swirled around them and pressed against them, speeding up and slowing down, depending on where they moved, where they stood. There was no real wind, only this strange liquid movement, like eddies in water. From within the structure came noises, gutteral grunts and odd gurgling sounds that could have been organic, could have been mechanical.
They all might be immune, like Vince said, but Glen was the one who was depicted in the paintings. He was the one who would have to enter that fortress.
He and the boy.
It was the one detail they had not shared with the others, the fact that Cameron needed to go in, too. Now, though, Glen said, "I think we'd better go in."
"Just let me check my flashlight--" Pace began.
"No. Just me and Cameron."
"What?"
"I want Cameron to come with me."
"No," the boy said.
"You're in the painting. You need to go in, too."
"I'm not going."
He grabbed Cameron's arm.
"Let me go!"
"Glen," Melanie said, touching his shoulder.
He shrugged her hand off. "You're coming with me!"
"Uncle Vince!"
"Cameron doesn't want to go--"
"I don't give a shit what he wants!"
"--and if he says he's not going, he doesn't have to."
"Oh, yes, he does."
Pace stepped in. "I'm going with you. Cameron can stay."
The boy broke free from Glen's grip and ran around to the front of his uncle's pickup, eyes teary, practically crying. "Why don't you go in there by yourself, you big chicken?"
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