Canyon Shadows

by C R Langille

  Troy smiled when the teen walked into the store to buy the razors. The muscles in his face groaned in protest as the smile spread further than it should have.

  Then, the feeling of euphoria left, inviting pain to re-enter his system. Troy pulled his arm away from Mauricio and fell to the ground.

  “Go to the mountain. He has more to show you. Your daddy is waiting for you.”

  The captain turned and walked away. A wave of nausea hit Troy like a sledgehammer. He retched until tears flowed from his eyes. He felt dirty; he felt wrong. The things he’d seen, the things he’d known, even for that brief amount of time, made him want to curl up into a little ball.

  He had to get up. If he got up and started moving, things would feel better. At least he hoped they would.

  Troy got up and wiped his face. That’s when he noticed the blood. He looked into the window and saw his image. Blood ran freely from his nose. He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know what to think, so he started laughing.

  ***

  “I know it sounds crazy, Doc, but that’s what I saw.”

  “Troy, you’ve been through a lot lately. Your father’s death—”

  “Suicide doc, let’s not paint a nice picture about it.”

  The doctor let out a deep sigh. Troy leaned against the wooden fence next to his house and lit a cigarette. It was hot outside but not as stuffy as his house. The A/C had died and left the living room feeling like a jungle.

  “Troy, anger is an understandable reaction to suicide. I’m not too worried about that; however, I am worried about these other reactions. The stress of what happened, along with the interactions with Captain Hernandez, is clearly unhealthy.”

  He inhaled a swathe of smoke and let the nicotine work its deadly magic. His arm throbbed where Mauricio had grabbed him, a large purple bruise forming like a dark smudge. A headache thrummed in his skull, slowly getting worse and worse ever since his encounter with the captain.

  “Doc, I think I’m going crazy. The things I saw; the things I’ve heard. I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I think you are very stressed out. Like I said before, having to deal with your father’s death, eh, suicide is a taxing ordeal. I suggest you take some time off work. When’s the last time you had a vacation?”

  He thought about it for a moment. Too long. The last vacation he took was to… the mountain. He shook his head, trying to clear the fuzziness. The last vacation he took was to Canada. He ate brunch at Port Manteau with his mother, and they went to see… the mountain.

  Troy growled in frustration and took another big puff of smoke. He tried to focus on the vacation when the doctor’s voice interrupted him.

  “Troy? You okay?”

  “Uh, yeah Doc, this headache is killing me. I’m having trouble concentrating. It’s been a while since I went on vacation.”

  “Look. I’ve been treating you for some time, and I can honestly say I’ve never heard you this stressed. I suggest you take a vacation. I will call in a prescription to the pharmacy by your house, something to help with the headache. Take a couple of weeks off from work. If you are still having troubles, I’ll recommend you a good psychiatrist friend of mine, someone you can see in an official capacity. What do you think?”

  He finished his cigarette and threw the butt into an old Folgers coffee can, half full of rank water and saturated cigarette filters.

  “You know what, Doc, I think you’re right. It is time for a vacation. I think I’ll go to Utah. I hear there is a great cliff dwelling in the mountain.”

  ***

  Dan braced himself for the gunshot that never came. Doyle stood and spun the gun around his finger like a cowboy. Then, with a deft move, he holstered it into one of the trench coat’s many pockets.

  “Yeehaw!” Doyle said.

  Dan cleared the dud from the chamber and racked a new round. He kept the weapon trained on the strange man’s chest.

  “Put your hands in the air and get on your knees,” Dan said.

  “I’m afraid not, flyboy. Just like you, I have orders. Got work to do! I’m takin’ care of business. Every day! Takin’ care of business.”

  “Lower management?” Dan asked.

  Dan never heard of an agent like the person who stood before him.

  “Is that what they call themselves nowadays?” Doyle asked shaking his head.

  “I want answers!” Dan said.

  Whoever this was, and whoever he worked for, the game was about to end. The man hinted at too much to let him walk free without the proper identification or responses.

  “So do I. This is about to become the wrong place. We have a Charlie Protocol going on. You know what that means? Wrong place, right time, and the Bureau doesn’t have a team available to help you,” Doyle said.

  Doyle paced back and forth scratching at his pate. He mumbled under his breath, too low for Dan to hear. Then, he started talking to someone, looking up to the ceiling. He spoke in a language that Dan didn’t understand. Dan knew a lot of languages.

  “One last time, tell me who you are, what you are doing here, and who you work for,” Dan said.

  Ice tempered his tone and got Doyle’s interest. The strange man in the duct-taped coat snapped to attention and gave a crisp salute.

  “Special Agent Doyle Lee Johnson, Identification: Husky-Pinto-Limburger 3-15-3, reporting for duty!”

  The muscles in Dan’s neck twitched, and he grit his teeth. Dan concentrated hard not to grip his gun too hard. He took a deep breath.

  “Hands up. Last warning,” Dan said.

  “Warnings. Signs. Echoes. Voices. Can you see them? Can you hear them? All through this town. Things are worse than you think, Dan Blackwood. You know. You’ve seen. You’ve heard,” Doyle said, lowering his salute.

  Dan didn’t like the fire lit in Doyle’s eyes. The hairs started to rise on his arms, and the room hummed with electricity. The floorboards creaked and moaned as the pressure mounted.

  “What are you?” Dan asked, lowering his gun.

  Doyle’s smile reappeared.

  “I’m an enigma, wrapped inside of a burrito, served with a side of crazy sauce!”

  Doyle muttered under his breath again, and the pressure hit the boiling point. Dan’s ears popped, and he lost his vision. Ringing chimed in his eardrums, and he was effectively deaf and blind. He stumbled outside, and as soon as his foot crossed the threshold, the ringing stopped, and his sight returned.

  He spun back towards the room and pulled his weapon up. Doyle was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  July 14th, 1180

  Tragedy has befallen our unfortunate group of ragtag knights. Yesterday, after we set camp for the night, Sir Pons became ill. We tried to keep him comfortable, but he found no respite from the pain. When asked what brought about his ailment, his only reply was; “Keep quiet! Can’t you hear it?” He rocked back and forth, clutching his skull while uttering these words over and over.

  In the middle of the night, he let out the most terrible of screams. We emerged from of our tents ready for battle; what we saw was terrible indeed.

  Sir Pons was pulling his hair from his head, screaming in a tongue unknown to my ear. We moved closer to stop him, and he took flight into the jungle. We gave chase, yet we were too late. In his frantic state, he didn’t see the edge of the cliff and fell to his demise.

  We couldn’t see the bottom, but we could hear him, moaning and screaming below. We were in the process of finding a safe way to the bottom when his cries of pain suddenly stopped, cut short by some unseen enemy.

  -Sir William Brock

  Canyon Shadows, Utah

  The creature lumbered from the cave. It shambled from its rocky tomb into night-shrouded wilderness. Years of being dead took its toll on the thing, yet through some unholy means, the creature’s flesh still clu
ng to its bones. It stunk of rot and filth, like a piece of meat left out for days in the summer sun. In the distance, the creature spied a young couple kissing under the moonlight.

  Joey tried to keep his cool; control was his life. He was the star quarterback, the hero of the school. His superior skill and cunning in football allowed the team to take the state championship game. Control was his middle name. Yet, kissing Candy, the head cheerleader, made it hard for him to remember his middle name.

  Candy breathed heavily into his ear, nibbled on it, and then sat back. She gave Joey her best “come hither” look and slowly started to undo the buttons on her blouse. Joey let out an audible “gulp” and fumbled with his belt. That was the exact moment the creature struck.

  The thing lifted the boy off the ground and pulled him face to face. Staring into the thing’s eyeless pits, Joey lost control and screamed. The cry turned into a gurgle when the creature sank its rotten teeth into the boy’s neck, blood spraying from the wound and covering Candy in a steady stream of red.

  Candy shrieked, her piercing wail cracking through Garret’s head like a cannonball, ripping him from his drink induced haze.

  He jumped out of bed and fell to the floor. He searched the room for the attacker but found no one. The girl screamed again, this time from the television. Currently playing was another “B-list” (possibly even “C-list”) gore-flick, Cave Zombies from Hell. On the screen, a man with tattered clothes and cheap special-effects makeup tore the scantily clad teenage girl apart. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Garrett found the remote control and turned it off.

  He wiped the drool and dried alcohol from his mouth before stumbling into the bathroom. Two forces attacked his senses: first, the bathroom. The room was a pinwheel of colors. A sickly shade of yellow paper adorned the wall, the kind of yellow that was once a bright yellow but was losing the war against Time. Opposite of this, the color of rotting oranges (mold included) decorated the trim. A deep red, very reminiscent of rust, splayed across the shower curtain. The final piece, the coup-de-grace, came from the lime green rug next to the toilet. The green was almost neon it was so bright, but at least it felt soft on his bare feet. Whoever decorated this room was either colorblind or into torture.

  Alcohol attacked his senses from the flank. He barely remembered opening the bottle of rum before everything went black, but telltale signs were there: aching joints and a headache that would make a migraineur cringe. Rum never affected him so heavily or quickly, but a lot of time had passed since he had gone on such a bender.

  He rummaged through the wastebasket, looking for the empty bottle. It wasn’t in the trash. He looked to the desk and found it sitting on the counter. It still contained half the rum.

  A battle raged in his body, one side fighting for a small shot to diffuse the pain—a little hair of the dog—and the other coming back with threats of vomit if he tried.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket disrupting his thoughts. A second later, music filled the air, muffled from his pants. He pulled the phone from his pocket, and the noise increased. The tune generally lifted his spirits, a piece from Mozart, yet the headache twisted the chords, turning them into an annoying cacophony.

  He flipped the phone open and put it to his ear. A loud screech sprung from the speaker and clawed its way into his head, sounding like bad feedback from a microphone. He cringed and dropped the phone to the ground.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  He bent down, fighting through the protests from his back, and picked it up. The noise disappeared.

  “Hello.”

  A giggle greeted him.

  Garrett’s heart missed a beat. He recognized the laughter immediately.

  “Maddie? Is that my Mad Maddie?”

  His brain couldn’t process the impossible situation. He fell into conversation with his dead daughter without missing a beat, like slipping on a pair of well-worn boots. She picked up the nickname after they had watched Mad Max together one weekend. It always made her laugh.

  Another giggle, this one higher pitched than the last.

  “Hey, baby. How’s my Mad Maddie doing?”

  The pain in his head jumped. He sat on the edge of the bed massaging his temple while holding the phone with the other hand.

  “Are you okay?” Garrett asked.

  “Daddy.”

  Another giggle.

  A small part of his brain screamed at him, trying to tell him how impossible this was. The drunken part ganged up with the section of his mind that missed his daughter, and they beat down the voice of reason, smothering it in the dark recesses of his mind.

  “Yeah. Daddy’s here, daddy’s here.”

  The giggles stopped, and only silence remained on the line. He waited for something, anything, but nothing happened. The voice of reason took advantage of the break in conversation. Perhaps he had drunk too much rum, and his mind was playing tricks. Maybe it was all a dream.

  “Maddie? Madeline, are you there?” A final desperate attempt.

  Another giggle.

  “Daddy, Mommy says she’s coming to visit soon,” Maddie said.

  The voice shifted. It still held a playful quality of a young child, but with a raspy, grating sound, like gravel on a chalkboard.

  The voice of reason returned.

  “What is this? What kind of sick joke is this?” Garrett asked.

  He felt a burning deep in his stomach. Whoever played this trick on him was going to pay dearly.

  “She said I couldn’t come yet, but I did anyway.”

  Another giggle, then the phone went dead.

  He stared at the small screen as it flashed the words call ended. Even though the call cut off, he still heard the child’s laughter. It came from the front door this time.

  He stood up and took small steps toward the door. He legs rebelled and refused to work, and he stumbled. As he neared, the giggles increased in volume. Just like the voice on the phone, the giggles started to take a deep, guttural quality. The sound bent through his ears, and he could hear both the small girl and a discordant deeper voice wavering like a broken stereo.

  He leaned forward to look out the peephole when a drop of blood hit his hand. Garrett stared at it like it was an alien substance. The warm liquid rolled from his nose over his mouth, and he tasted the coppery hint of blood.

  The giggles took a hurried, maniacal tone, almost turning into a cackle. His vision blurred, and the pain in his head doubled.

  He peered out into the night. A flickering light bulb above his door did little to stave off the darkness. A dark shape stood outside.

  He tried to focus on the figure, but his eyes refused to listen to the command. The laughter stopped. Subconsciously, he pulled away from the door and cocked his head, listening. A whisper filtered through the cheap wooden door.

  “Mommy’s coming soon.”

  He peered through the peephole again, afraid of what might be out there. The light flickered once more then died. The darkness won.

  “Dddaaadddyyy… Mommy’s coming to play!”

  He strained to see something, anything, through the unnatural darkness that had gathered at his doorstep. The blood continued to gush from his nostrils, and he breathed through his mouth to get air.

  “Daddy!”

  The voice thundered at him from all sides. Something slammed into the door with enough force to shake the dust off the nearby curtains.

  He fell backward, slamming his head onto the floor, the plush carpet failing to pad the concrete beneath. His vision roiled, and the ceiling spun, reminding him of his first bender. He tried to wrestle his body up, but after propping one elbow on the floor, he wavered to his side, threw up, and rolled onto his back. He heard giggling from outside his door as his world went black.

  ***

  Rusty huddled close to a campfire, slow-cooking a rabbit near the fla
mes. He turned the rabbit a couple of times then stopped. Looking up to the sky, he stood up and removed his “Chick Magnet” trucker hat.

  The stars were wrong, all slightly askew. The air held an electric quality to it, as if he’d been walking on the carpet with socks on and a static shock was just about to occur.

  The trees shuddered.

  The rocks held their breath in anticipation.

  Something was about to happen.

  “Well, shit,” he whispered.

  Rusty packed up his things and extinguished the small campfire. He grabbed the rabbit and walked down the road. It was late, and it was dark, but he needed to get to Canyon Shadows as soon as possible. Things were in motion now, and the land called for his aid.

  ***

  Nobody ran out of the motel or came to investigate what happened. Somehow, the strange man in the duct tape trench coat contained the event to the room itself. That kind of skill took talent. Dan peered into the room, already knowing that the man was long gone. The spell of teleportation could have taken him anywhere and anytime.

  Something was wrong. Not the magic the duct tape bandit was flinging around, but something deeper.

  Dan walked to the edge of the railing and looked down. Darkness coalesced in front of a room on the main level like a miniature storm cloud. The darkness ate the light from the porch’s light bulb until it completely disappeared. After a moment, the room’s door light flickered back to life, and the dark dissipated, floating away on the breeze like smoke from a cigarette. Dan let out a sigh and looked back to the empty room behind him.

  “When it rains, it pours.”

  Chapter Ten

  July 24th, 1180

  The death of Sir Pons struck a mighty blow to morale. We do our best to continue with chins raised high, but his wails of pain and the sudden vanishing of his cries echo in my mind. We have moved from the dark jungles to a harsh and arid waste; rock, sage, and dust fill our days. Sir Geoffrey remains quiet since the death of Sir Pons, but his body belies excitement. For what, I do not know. The further north we move, the greater the fires burn in his eyes. I feel we travel closer to our ultimate destination. What that means for Sir Geoffrey, or for the rest of us, is unknown. God be with us.