Old Broken Road

by Alexander, K. M.

  I winced and she let her voice trail off. I stared down at my boots but I felt her eyes staring at me. Those dark beautiful eyes filled with disappointment.

  Reckless. It was definitely a more fitting title than Guardian.

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could say but it sounded weak in my ears. She was right. At the very least I should have let my partner know. We were damn lucky no one was killed. It was a mess.

  My father always said that in the end a man’s failures revealed his strengths. How we handle them, how we deal with the fallout. It had been my call. I accepted full responsibility. As a result, a distance grew between Samantha and I. It was clear in her sepia stare over the fire last night and in her dispassionate tone that morning as we stood waiting in the chuck line.

  Wensem had also been displeased that I hadn’t mentioned Taft’s plan to him. Yet one more step in a long line of missteps. He had the temperament of a glacier. Was the slowest of slow burns. Until now I ignored him, forced my way. Hell, I made decisions that he was supposed to help make. He was responsible for security and I had pushed him aside. I left him out of the plan and put the company in danger.

  “This isn’t much of a partnership, Wal,” he had said, his blue-gray eyes tinged with sadness. “I had a right to know.”

  I apologized. I meant it but he only looked at me for a long moment before walking away quietly, shaking his head. I wondered if this wasn’t a permanent crack in the foundation of our company. If the bonds of trust had been broken.

  Sitting in a corner, pounding my head, and chanting “stupid, stupid, stupid,” over and over sounded good at that moment.

  Samantha turned and looked at me, eyes wide.

  “What is it?” I had seen that look before. She’d discovered something.

  “It’s…” Her mouth hung open.

  “Yes?”

  “Wal, we’re dealing with another First. Another monster. Like Cybill.”

  The words slapped into me like slugs fired from a pistol. I blinked.

  “You think Boden’s trying to bring another one back? Resurrect it? Like Black?” The words stumbled out of me.

  She shook her head. “No. I think Boden is a First. I think he’s one of them.”

  Something flipped in my stomach. I didn’t go much for the old stories, the tales of monsters from beyond returning to earth. The prophecies of the re-Aligning. It all seemed like religious gobbledygook. But then I had seen Cybill. Seen whatever she was. Some bizarre alien madness given form. Thrashing around in the Humes tunnel below Lovat. Her eyes focused on me. Watching as I killed Black. Watching as I brought the tunnel down around us. Was Boden another version of her? He had transformed before my very eyes...

  “We need to open that trunk,” said Wensem. His crooked mouth was drawn tight.

  I agreed.

  “Hold on. I need time,” said Samantha. “I need to finish translating the exterior. Know what we’re messing with inside. Make sure whatever is in there isn’t dangerous.”

  I rose, my right knee popping as I put weight on it.

  “Sounds good to me. I’m going to go check on Hannah. If you discover anything come find one of us.”

  Wensem and I walked outside from the shadows of the Big House and emerged into the bright overcast day. Last night was uneventful. Uneventful! The very idea made me smile. I couldn’t remember the last time an evening had been uneventful. I looked up at my partner and slapped him on the shoulder, surveying the town. He gave me a cool reluctant look.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, spreading my hands in penance.

  Wensem looked away and frowned but didn’t say anything.

  “Really,” I said. “I am. It wasn’t right. You’re right. I was too wrapped up in my head. This whole time I have been rushing around and pushing you off to the side.”

  “We used to make decisions together,” said Wensem.

  I nodded.

  Wensem continued. “Something has changed in you, Wal.”

  I swallowed.

  “Before the thing in the tunnel with Black, you used to rely on me. Talk with me. Now…” He studied me with his blue-gray eyes. “I’m not so sure what you’re doing.”

  “I…” My mouth closed. I didn’t have an explanation. I was making decisions without him. Choosing the Broken Road, forcing the Lytle twins on him despite his protests. This whole trip had been a bumbling disaster brought to you by yours truly.

  We walked slowly, taking in the perimeter of the barricades and nodding to passing citizens. We made our way absently to the laager where Taft was trying to feed Hannah.

  “Look, I am sorry I wasn’t there when you were in trouble. Maybe this is some subconscious thing where you feel you need to be totally independent.” Wensem stopped speaking and looked down at me, meeting my dusty gaze. “Just because August betrayed you doesn’t mean I will, Wal.”

  I blinked. A flash of anger bubbled up, but I batted it away. What remained was a pang of loneliness. Regret. August. My friend. He had been killed before I could get answers, but it seems he had betrayed me. Betrayed me to Black. Put me in the position to become this… Guardian.

  Was Wensem right? Were my actions based on some fear of betrayal? I was speechless. I had nothing to say in response. Just a mix of confusion and worry.

  Wensem sighed. “It worked out. You saved Hannah’s life and stopped Boden from taking Range.”

  “I should have told you.”

  “You should have.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “I know,” Wensem sighed again, and then a crooked smile flashed on his lips. “You’re a pain in my ass, Wal. It does the company no good for us to be at one another and we both know I can’t remain mad, but this worries me. Without trust this caravan will evaporate. Look at what’s happened on this trip already. You lead. I followed. We didn’t discuss. We had no strategy. We had no backup.”

  “I—”

  “No, I’m not finished,” Wensem said. I closed my mouth. “I’m your partner. You’re my best friend. Hell, my son bears your first name as his own. Remember that next time you have a plan. If you can’t trust me, Wal, there’s probably no one else you can.

  “I like Taft, I do, but she’s been with us for two runs. Two.” He held up two of his long fingers. “You and I have been together for hundreds of runs. That has to count for something.”

  “It does,” I said, and then repeated myself. “It does. I’m really sorry.”

  My brain was spinning. I wasn’t sure what I believed now. Wensem was right, I was putting myself in position where I didn’t rely on anyone. I made the decisions. I acted, or didn’t act, alone. I thought of Samantha.

  “It worked out this time. Staying mad at you for being an ass won’t help. We’re now one night free of a kidnapping and that damnable noise. I’d really like to get out of this town, off this road, and see Kit and my boy.”

  “We can’t leave these people here,” I said. Boden was still out there, and the sheriff was still missing. We might have ruined whatever he planned for the time being and rescued our own people but if we left, nothing would be here to stop him. He could go right back to terrorizing Methow.

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “Really.”

  “I know,” Wensem said, looking over his shoulder at the Big House and then back at me. “I was the easy one. Wait till you have this conversation with Sam.”

  Hannah sat on a stool near the campfire and stared at the stump where her left hand had been. Taft had cleaned her up. Dressed her in her only other change of clothes. Her finer things, the stuff she wore when we walked into a town. Khaki trousers. A white shirt. Her bandages were redressed.

  I squatted in front of her, searching her face for the Hannah I knew. She just stared down at her stump.

  Gone were the wisecracks. The wry grin. The bright flashes from her pretty pale green eyes.

  Now she was bruised and broken. I wondered if this incident had finished her. Would
she ever roam the roads again? She was a good scout. The best. The roads would be the lesser if Hannah Clay didn’t walk them.

  I sat down next to her and draped my arm around her. She felt so small. Together we stared: Hannah at the stump, I at the smoldering fire at the center of the laager.

  For a long while she didn’t react, she just kept staring in silence. Her breath came slow and steady, her shoulders rising and falling like the bellows on a forge.

  Finally she leaned into me a little, and turned her eyes away from her missing hand, resting her head on my shoulder. I gave her a gentle squeeze.

  “He hates you,” Hannah mumbled. “He h-hates you so much.”

  “Who?” I said, surprised to hear Hannah speak.

  “Curwen. He calls himself Curwen.”

  “Curwen? You mean Boden?”

  She ignored my question. “I never saw him. He always worked in the dark. Beating me. T-t-torturing me. He made me w-watch. Made me watch as he crucified Shaler.”

  She paused and drew in a breath.

  “I didn’t see much. It was dark. But I could hear. Oh, I could hear. She was still alive Wal. Still breathing. She kept screaming. Nothing tangible. Just horrible… horrible screams.”

  Hannah leaned into me and buried her face in my shoulder. She began to shake, and after a moment I could feel moisture soak into my shirt as she cried.

  You don’t move in times like these, so I sat. Running my hand gently over her hair. Telling her she was safe. That it would be okay. I hoped it was true.

  Taft came over and settled near the fire. Mouthing a “she talkin’?” to me, pointing with a wooden spoon.

  I nodded.

  Taft smiled and tucked the cooking utensil into the pocket of her apron.

  When Hannah’s tears let up she pulled away, wiping her eyes with the back of her remaining hand.

  “He said this was all an experiment. The grandest experiment. Methow is the first, a control group. He said life was a hideous thing and humanity is the most hideous of all and he’s going to prove it. He wants to show that people can be broken. That left to their own devices they revert to evil. He wants to see how long it would take to break us.”

  Hannah paused and took another breath before continuing. “This whole thing: the deaths, the dreams, the sounds. He’s doing it all. Manufacturing it all for some sick experiment.”

  She erupted into more tears and leaned back into me.

  Samantha walked up, Wensem in tow.

  She glanced quickly at Hannah, and then me, before speaking. “I got it. I think we can open it.”

  “You want to be there when we do?” asked Wensem.

  “Give me a moment.”

  Hannah, pushing herself away from me, sniffled and wiped her eyes again. “No, boss. Go.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded.

  I gave her shoulder a squeeze and rose, following Samantha and Wensem back into the Big House.

  The mayor and Councilwoman Eustis were in Boden’s room when Samantha, Wensem, Taft, and I returned. The small room was now quite crowded.

  “Where’s the sheriff?”

  “I am sure he’ll be back,” said Eustis.

  “Do we need to go looking for him?”

  The mayor shook his head no.

  “You realize we think he’s involved,” said Wensem.

  “He’s missing and Boden is missing.”

  The mayor chuckled. “Joul? Involved in this? No, he’s not involved. He’d never be involved in this.”

  I raised an eyebrow and the mayor smiled a vapid little smile before turning back to the chest. “We can discuss it later, but for now let’s talk about Boden’s chest.”

  Wensem gave me a sideways glance and I let the matter rest. The sheriff had to be involved in this somehow. He had tried to stop us from the beginning. I was sure it was no coincidence he disappeared the night Boden took Range.

  Samantha laid a hand on the chest and smiled. “This box is thousands of years old. Maybe ten thousand, maybe older than that. It’s hard to date specifically.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Well, it tells a story. About a prince who comes up out of Kemet to show the world wonders. It’s not very specific on the details. He is called…”

  “Curwen,” I said absently, thinking about Hannah’s words.

  Samatha tilted her head to one side. “How’d you…”

  “Hannah. She said Boden was calling himself Curwen. Is this the same Curwen the Curwenites follow?”

  Samantha nodded. “If these pictograms are right it’s one and the same.”

  Curwen was said to be chaos incarnate. His followers wore blue jumpsuits and would collect icons and idols from various faiths and weld them together creating unholy abominations that changed and shifted. Each idol was said to be one of Curwen’s faces, and as often as their idols changed so did their beliefs. Violent fights would break out between sects who disagreed with one another, and still they all found it enrapturing. The perfect way to worship chaos. It was strange to think we could be facing their god.

  “Curwen,” Taft repeated as if tasting the name.

  “Wait, so Curwen is Enoch Boden?” the mayor asked, his mouth set in a scowl and his eyebrows drawn tight.

  “Seems that way,” Samantha continued. “According to this story Curwen arrives at a small town and the residents dismiss him, so he begins to punish them with nightmares and howling laughter from the sky. He brings them visions of dead worlds and eventually deposits them on the footsteps of a vortex.”

  Samantha stopped and looked at each of us.

  “Is that it?” I said.

  “Is that it? That’s the oldest legend in Curwenite doctrine! This matches their holiest scriptures. Do you realize how important this is?”

  “Does it say anything about the killings?” asked Wensem.

  “It doesn’t say anything about the killings,” said Samantha, exasperation in her voice.

  “So is opening that thing is safe?” asked Taft.

  “Well,” Samantha smiled, her eyes lighting up. “This isn’t just a trunk.”

  “Sure looks like a trunk to me,” said Wensem.

  “Well, it has four sides, a top, hinges, and the like, but this is a specific type of trunk. These symbols near the latch refer to it as the “Prince’s Travel Trunk.” Not a direct translation mind you, but close. These are his personal effects for traveling between worlds.”

  “What if… whatever is inside is dangerous?” asked Eustis.

  “Well, then you’d better stand outside,” Samantha said. She looked at Wensem and I. “We need to open this thing up.”

  Wensem nodded and handed me a crowbar and we went to work.

  The chest popped open easily. It revealed an interior devoid of dust and well worn. Resting just below the lid was an insert that ran the length and width of the chest. It was filled with paper clippings about the northern Territories describing the small towns there and the rumors of the Broken Road. A map with a few locations circled. Alongside those items were a few recent newspapers from Lovat with headlines reading: “COLLECTOR KILLER DEAD. BELL EXONERATED,” “BELL WALKS ON LPD’S FAILURE,” and finally, “TUNNEL COLLAPSE CAUSES DAMAGE UP TO LEVEL FOUR. PEOPLE MISSING.”

  The old man had been doing his research.

  Atop this collection lay a small leather-bound journal. It was tied with a bit of leather that was tipped with gold charms that looked like tiny cat heads. A small icon of a tree branch with five limbs was embossed into the leather.

  Samantha plucked it up and, undoing the leather tie, began leafing through the yellowed pages.

  Her eyes instantly went wide and she looked up at me.

  “Aklo?” I guessed.

  “Aklo.”

  The dead language of the Firsts. To be able to read and write Aklo Boden either had to be a scholar of great renown, someone Samantha would know personally, or a native speaker. I drew in a long, deep breath.

 
Wensem and I lifted the insert out. “Let’s see what else he has in here.”

  A second insert lay below the first, split into two trays as opposed to one long tray. In these were folded robes of luxurious fabric, a pair of crisp white shirts, some silk slippers, but nothing more.

  “Enoch had these?” gasped the councilwoman.

  Below those was a final insert with small drawers. They were filled with all manner of nicknacks. Gold jewelry. A small scepter. A few pocketbooks written in the pictogram language that lined the outside.

  Wensem lifted this last set of inserts out and set them on the floor. I could feel bodies press around me as everyone leaned in to get a good look at what lay below, inside the trunk.

  Gasps went up around the room.

  A small human body lay in the space. Mummified and withered, the skin tightened against the bone, lacking its original color and looking more like leather gone to patina. Through a hole in the skull flashed a bizarre-looking crystal, as if the brain had hardened into a mineral.

  My mouth went suddenly dry as I recognized this man’s face. It was withered and shrunken, yes, but the resemblance was still there. The noble nose. The trim jaw.

  “I think we found the real Enoch Boden.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “I… I CAN’T… I CAN’T BELIEVE IT,” mumbled Councilwoman Eustis. She blinked rapidly, shuffled across the room, and collapsed onto the edge of Boden’s bed where she wept quietly into her hands.

  The mayor didn’t react. He stared dumbfounded down into the trunk, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open.

  “How long you think he’s been here?” asked Wensem peering into the trunk. The corpse was crammed into the small space, neck bent forward, knees almost touching his jaw. The arms were twisted and looked as if they had been broken trying to stuff him into an awkward fetal position.

  Samantha peered down and touched the skin very carefully. I stifled a shudder.