"I understand why you don't want the public to know," Henry said. A decade or so back, there'd been a serial killer on the loose near Yosemite, and attendance had fallen precipitously, jeopardizing several park projects. Canyonlands was much more primitive, much more remote and much less popular than Yosemite. "But why not tell us? What's the point?"

  "I need time to figure out what to say. I don't want | to get everyone all ... panicked."

  "No one's going to panic. Who do you think you're dealing with here?"

  "Nevertheless, keep it to yourself until I say so, got | it? I'll decide when the time is right."

  From down the road leading into the park came the whine of sirens.

  Henry stood, and despite the circumstances it was all he could do not to smile. "Good luck with that," he said.

  The body had been beaten into unrecognizability. Along with the other rangers on duty, Henry peeked around the corner of the doorframe into the workroom. He'd imagined the dead woman's body lying naked on one of the long worktables next to the battered tools and artifacts like a corpse ready to be autopsied. So it was a surprise to see it slumped on the floor next to one of the bookcases in faded jeans and a torn bloodstained T-shirt, her head a pulpy red mess dripping on the dark bruised skin of her neck. A forensics team was examining the body, inspecting it with gloved fingers, touching it with metal calipers, photographing and videotaping it from various angles.

  Her, he had to remind himself. She was a her, not an it.

  The woman did not appear to be a park employee or anyone he recognized, and quick conversations with the other lookiloos confirmed that they were just as much in the dark as he was. Speculation was rife that one of their own had murdered the woman-who else could have gotten into the building at night?-but Henry did not believe it for a second, and he knew from their earlier conversation that the superintendent didn't either. No, this was of a piece with the vandalism out there, and he could easily imagine those naked twins beating the woman to death with the same primitive tools with which they defaced the rock art, then carrying her body back here.

  He shifted his legs slightly, pressing them together, trying to keep down his erection.

  Despite the day's heat, the night was chill, and, unable to sleep, Henry walked onto the small porch of his cabin, staring out at the desert, half expecting to see two female figures sauntering sexily toward him. He thought about the defaced cliffs. He wanted to believe that the vandalism was random, pointless, but he kept coming back to those twins. Somewhere deep down, he knew the two were connected, and he could not help wondering if the revised artwork was meant as a message, was a way for something to tell him ... tell him ... tell him what? He didn't know, had not even the faintest clue, and as much as anything else, it was the incomprehensibility of it all that gnawed at him, that kept his brain spinning and unable to sleep.

  Henry glanced toward the other cabins, saw nothing but darkness. A porch light had been turned on at Laurie Chambers' place-Why? Was it supposed to act as some sort of homing beacon, drawing her back?-but other than that, the cabins appeared deserted. Ironic, he thought, that the one cabin that appeared to be occupied was the dead woman's.

  Dead woman's?

  She's only missing, he told himself, but he thought about the bloody pulpy face of the body in the workroom and knew in his gut that Laurie had been murdered, too.

  A meteor streaked across the starry southern sky, visible for a fraction of a second in his peripheral vision, and he was reminded of those shadows in the box canyon, those brief glimpses of darting black forms that he'd been given and that even in broad daylight had scared the living hell out of him. Were they still there now? he wondered. If so, what were they doing? He had the sudden desire to drive out to the canyon and see for himself. It was stupid, he knew; it was wrong; it violated every rule and every scrap of common sense he had, but he wanted to see the rock art at night, to look for those mysterious dark forms and see if they were once again defacing ancient cliff drawings.

  Must be that Indian blood in his veins.

  He didn't hesitate, didn't try and talk himself out of it, but immediately went back inside the cabin, got his keys and closed the front door. Before he could change his mind, he was in the Jeep and off.

  But of course he was not about to change his mind. The desire to be out there in the canyons, to see for himself what went on at night, was strong within him, a drive, almost a need, and though he didn't understand it, he accepted it.

  Henry knew the trails of the park like the back of his cock, and once off the pavement he sped over eroded sandstone and hard-packed dirt as easily as if he'd been navigating city streets on a bright sunny day. There were numerous other cliffs and rocks containing petroglyphs, but instinct led him back to the box canyon, and once again he arrived in a cloud of dust. He braked to a stop and waited until the dust had settled before he got out of the Jeep. He'd brought several flashlights and a high-powered handheld halogen, and he trained the powerful search beam on the cliff directly before him. The light played across the dark rock wall, illuminating the train track going into a tunnel, the collection of sledgehammers, but not showing anything new. He shone the light around the canyon, but it revealed nothing and served only to make the surrounding darkness blacker, so he shut it off, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

  The world was silent, and that seemed strange. He could hear the snickering of his shoes on the sand, the ticking of the Jeep's engine cooling down, but that was it. Ordinarily, the cries of nocturnal animals from owls to coyotes sounded in these canyons, but tonight all was still, and Henry found that extremely disconcerting.

  He wished he'd brought his shotgun.

  But he knew a gun wouldn't do any good against what was out here.

  He stood next to the Jeep.

  Waited.

  Watched.

  And then he saw them. Shadows on the canyon floor, two shadows moving in tandem across the moonlit sand, and Henry's heart accelerated from its usual laconic tom-tom to the rat-a-tat-tat of a high-powered assault rifle. They were not hiding as they had been earlier in the day, not confining themselves to the edges of his vision, but sliding directly toward him in full view, defiant, proud, threatening. He realized as they moved closer that they were upright. Not only were the shadows autonomous, unattached to any concrete form or object; they were not, as he had originally thought, projected onto the ground. That was an optical illusion fostered by distance. They were flat and one-dimensional, but they stood like people, feet to the sand, head in the air, and though they glided rather than walked, they were human figures.

  He was frightened but excited, and made no effort to escape. The shadows reached him, began slowly and sensuously swirling about his body. He saw silhouetted nipples, outlines of perfect vaginal clefts. He was aroused as he had never been before, and he reached down, half-hypnotized, and unfastened his jeans, pulling down his briefs, freeing himself, letting the pants fall around his ankles. The shadows bent before him, appeared to be kissing his quivering erection, and although there was no sensation of touch and he could feel nothing, the sight was too much for him, and he began spurting, thrusting uselessly into the air as his seed spilled onto the sand below.

  The shadows rushed over to where the thick drops congealed on the ground, and began licking them up.

  The semen disappeared.

  It was impossible, it made no sense, but Henry did not question it, was not even surprised. His penis had finished, was now starting to shrink, but he took it in his hand and milked a few last drops, watching as the semen fell onto the sand and the twins' shadows gobbled it up.

  Were the shadows more solid now, less ephemeral? He thought so, but he could not be sure.

  The dark flat figures continued to swirl about him, and there was a hunger evident in their movements, a craving he sensed and felt and that frightened him to the core.

  He turned and fled.

  It was an instinctive reaction and a stupid one. He'd been close by the Jeep and the only place to go was away from it, but that meant he was abandoning his only hope of getting out of the canyon and back to the real world. It didn't make any difference, though. The shadows refused to follow him, and when he looked back, he saw them retreating the way they'd come, looking like two predators on the prowl.

  Where were they going now?

  The seductive sensuality they'd exhibited around him was gone, and once again their purposeful glide seemed menacing, predacious. He waited until their dark forms had blended with the blackness of the canyon before he ran back to the Jeep, jumping in and driving out of there as fast as he could go.

  What had happened? What had he done? He was filled with the unshakable certainty that he had helped them, had given them strength. Whatever occurred from here on in, he was part of it; he was involved. He thought of Laurie, of the dead woman in the workroom. In his mind Henry saw once again the sickening spectacle of the shadows hungrily devouring his semen. He felt tired, drained, frustrated, scared and, most of all, used. And as the Jeep bumped over the rounded sandstone he had to blink back tears so he could see the way back to the road.

  Nine

  The Keep, Missouri

  It was long after midnight, but Hank Gifford lay awake, his eyes on an infomercial promoting some type of kitchen gadget, his mind on the mud pits out back. Next to him, Arlene snored loudly in her sleep, drooling on the edge of his pillow. He would have pushed her back to her own side of the bed, but that might wake her up, and the last thing he wanted to do was listen to her meaningless talk in the middle of the night.

  The mud pits had him worried because he wasn't there to watch them. It was unavoidable. He couldn't monitor the situation twenty-four hours a day. But what if one of them got out when he wasn't looking, when he was asleep? He imagined a spindly shriveled form slinking along the trails of the garden, sneaking into the museum, working its way up to the house.

  Of course, if he saw one of them out, he'd shoot it and stuff it. That would be a great addition to The Keep.

  Except ... what if he didn't see it? What if he was asleep when it got into the house? What if he awoke with the sulfur smell of the pits in his nostrils to see a skeletal figure climbing atop Arlene, ripping her face off and turning toward him with a terrible grin of malicious glee?

  That's what worried him; that's what kept him up.

  Hank picked up the remote control from the nightstand and pressed the mute button, listening. The house was silent. Good. He turned the sound back up a little. He was tempted to go out and check on the mud pits, but while he'd gone there with his flashlight at night many times before, he was afraid to do so now.

  They're rising again.

  He'd been telling that to the customers, and it was true. He didn't know how he knew it, but he did. They were rising, all of the heathens and unbelievers who had been fed to the pits. He had no idea how many of them were down there, their bodies sunk in the muck-no records had been kept of such things-but his daddy had told him all those years ago that every last one of them had been taken care of by the men of the towns, that after the purges none had been left in this part of Missouri.

  That could mean ten.

  It could mean a hundred.

  He'd always known they would rise again. His daddy had told him that, too. One of the infidels had apparently sworn it with his last breath-at least that's how the story went-and the men of the towns had believed him. Even as good Christians they'd recognized the truth behind the heathen curse, and-

  The bedroom's south wall exploded as though hit with a battering ram.

  Arlene awoke screaming, and Hank scrambled out from under the blanket, off the bed. The right leg of his pajama bottom got stuck on the stray wire that stuck out from the side of the box springs, but he pulled hard, ripping the material, and continued his frantic escape. They're out, he thought wildly. They're attacking. Debris was flying all about; dust was everywhere. A piece of brick zoomed by his head, smashing the mirror on the dresser. He hazarded a look back, beheld a gigantic black form larger than the house. It wasn't them, he saw. It was a train. Even through the cloud of dust, he could make out the headlight on the front of the locomotive, the slanting grille that protruded through the hole in their wall. Only ...

  Only it wasn't a train. Not really. It was ...

  Something else.

  But he didn't have time to think about that. The house was collapsing around his ears, and Arlene had been pinned to the bed by a fallen beam. The end of the rabbeted board lay embedded in her back, and blood gushed from her mouth onto the pillow-his pillow-each time she tried to cry out. He knew he should try to help her, but he turned without pause and attempted to run out of the room, away from the big black form that looked like a train but was not a train. The wall in front of him dropped, the doorway disappearing in a hail of plaster and wood as structural support gave way, and he staggered backward only to be slammed from behind by something that was at once hard and soft, something sticky and mushy but backed by a substance as hard as steel. He was knocked sideways to the floor as the bed fell atop him, Arlene's crushed and bloody body mashing hard against his own, her lifeless lips dripping into his ear. For a brief second, behind her, above her, in back of the broken bed, he could see the massive object that looked like a locomotive.

  There was a noise, a roar, as of a hundred people screaming in unbearable agony.

  And then there was death.

  Ten

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  Angela had high hopes for date number four.

  The third date had gone well. The jazz concert had been pretty nice, even though the music was more her parents' speed than hers. Brian had obviously felt the same way, because he suggested they skip out at intermission, and they ended up walking along the sidewalks of the campus at night, talking about their pasts, their futures, their visions of the world. The evening was chill, fall beginning to creep in after sunset even though summer still ruled the day, but that only made them pull closer and gave a pleasant edge to the otherwise tranquil stroll. They'd ended up at his dorm, doing what people usually did at the conclusion of a successful date.

  This time they decided to try a rock concert.

  The auditorium was packed. They arrived early, but still the parking lot was jammed, the lines were long, and inside there was standing room only. The buzz was all about the band, none of the usual small talk by friends and couples, and Angela eavesdropped on the closest conversation, a gaggle of high school girls who couldn't seem to decide who was cuter: the guys in Hoobastank or the members of Lightyear, the band playing here tonight. Ordinarily, that would have been ( the death knell for Angela's interest in the group, but : on the other side of her, two older male music majors were speaking admiringly in measured tones about the band as well.

  "This should be interesting," she shouted. The preconcert music had suddenly cranked up several decibels.

  "What?" Brian shouted back.

  i said, 'This should be interesting'!"

  He nodded. "They're really good!"

  The lights dimmed.

  Even though Lightyear was from the Phoenix area, what locals referred to as "the Valley," the band members were still Arizonans, and the crowd treated them like conquering hometown heroes. A huge roar greeted the musicians as they took to the stage, and though Angela had gone to a lot of concerts and a lot of clubs back in Los Angeles, she had never experienced a reaction like this. She, too, got caught up in '· the excitement, and as the band slammed into its first song, she felt the way she had the first time she'd seen Pearl Jam: as if she were in the presence of greatness.

  The concert was amazing. She was an old hand at this stuff, jaded as only an L.A. native could be, but after the show she wanted to hit the table at the back of the hall and buy the group's CD. These guys were definitely going places. The lines were too big, though, and she wasn't sure she had enough money with her, so she decided to pick one up tomorrow at Hastings. If they didn't have any CDs in stock, she'd order one.

  Brian was silent on the way back home. She expected him to stop off somewhere-a coffeehouse so they could talk, even a lovers' lane so they could make out-but he drove her directly back to Babbitt House. Despite the good vibes left over from the concert, and even before he said a word, she had a queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach, a bad feeling.

  "I don't think this is working."

  The car was pulling to a stop in front of the lawn, and his eyes were still on the road, not on her.

  Where was this coming from? She thought things were going great. Not just tonight but overall. They had fun together, they never seemed to run out of conversation, and physically ... well, they were both obviously into each other. She'd even e-mailed her friends in L.A. about him because it looked like this was going to last awhile.

  And now it wasn't "working"?

  When had this happened?

  She looked at him and found that although she was surprised, she was not surprised. That bad feeling had been trying to tell her something and on some level she'd understood.

  Angela cleared her throat. "Why?" she asked, not trusting herself to say more. There was a sudden distance between them, they were no longer a we or an us but two separate people, and she was now asking the question of a stranger.

  The car had stopped, but he remained looking out the front window, would still not turn to face her. "I just ... I don't know. Sometimes you can tell, you know, if things are working out or not. ..."

  Why hadn't he said anything about this before? He'd obviously been thinking about it for a while because nothing had happened tonight that could have possibly resulted in a change of heart. She grew angry as she recalled their light conversation at dinner, the easy good time they'd had before the start of the concert. He'd been lying the whole time, putting on an act, and she hated him for it. Why had he gone out with her tonight? Why hadn't he canceled? Because he already had the tickets, wanted to see the show and thought it was too late to line up anyone else? She was suddenly sure that was the case.

 

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