The Obsidian Mirror, page 27
The three women turned as one and bounded into the woods, running like deer that had blundered into a convention of wolves.
An hour later, the sheriff’s department cruiser came back along the highway, slowing and stopping by the deserted Jeep. The woman got out and checked the doors and looked around. Everything appeared peaceful and undisturbed, so she climbed back into the car.
“Guess they decided to hike right here,” her partner remarked. “Too bad. They’d’ve had a much better hike back at the Devil’s Postpile.”
“Yeah,” said the woman, fastening her seat belt. “I hope they don’t go too far in. This area is riddled with sinkholes and rotten limestone. I should’ve told them that.” She sighed, taking another look at the car. “I guess we better radio the Forest Service and let them know there’s some idiots hiking off-trail again.”
“Okay,” said her partner. “Where do you want to get lunch?” The car drove off down the highway, and all was quiet again.
Chapter 33
Clancy quickly found the turnoff with the lightening-blasted tree and the boulder. He unfastened his pistol in its holster and released the safety. He turned down the track, noting that a vehicle had recently passed that way. The bushes and small wildflowers by the side of the track were coated with dust. Clancy couldn’t hear Chaco shadowing him through the trees and brush, but he knew the coyote was nearby. He began to walk, as quietly as he could manage, scanning the woods around him as he went.
When he came upon Sierra’s car, Clancy hung back for several minutes, listening and looking. Nothing stirred. He glimpsed Chaco for an instant, ahead of him on the dwindling track, before the coyote slipped noiselessly back into the undergrowth. By the time he got to the rock where Sierra had rested for a while, Chaco was there, nose to the ground, tail stiff and body tense. Chaco looked up as Clancy approached.
“She was here,” Chaco growled low, ears laid back against his skull. “And she’s been hurt.”
“What? How do you know?” demanded Clancy.
“There’s the smell of blood,” replied the coyote. “Not a lot of it,” he said quickly, as Clancy turned pale beneath his tan. “But there’s definitely a smell of her blood here. And her spoor stops here. And Jumlin was here too.” He snorted. “The stink of him is everywhere. And fresh, too.”
Clancy felt a frozen fist close around his heart. Jumlin. The monster that would have sacrificed Sierra like a chicken. The anthropophage. The cannibal. His stomach clenched.
“Where now?” he asked Chaco. “Where did he take her?”
Chaco set off down the track, now diminished to little more than a deer trail wandering through the trees. Clancy followed, as quickly and quietly as he was able, but he was no match for Chaco’s four paws, and the coyote sped out of sight.
Clancy tried to keep his mind on the task at hand, but it was no easy feat. He pushed away nightmare visions of Sierra’s body, slit open like a gutted fish, bleeding on a stone altar. He tried not to think about the horrors the others had witnessed. Such things would only sap his will and suck away his courage. He hiked stolidly ahead, alert for any sound or motion. Every nerve was raw, and he started at the sudden winging of a bird from branch to branch, or the shrill scolding of a squirrel.
When Chaco suddenly reappeared on the path, Clancy’s heart scrabbled against his chest wall like a small animal trying to escape.
Chaco said in a low voice, “There’s a cave. Around the big pile of boulders there, to the right. No, you can’t see it—the opening has been enlarged, but it’s hidden in the rocks.”
Clancy couldn’t see an opening, but he was sure Chaco knew what he was talking about. He unholstered his pistol.
“What do you think you’re doing?” hissed Chaco. “You think you can kill Jumlin with a gun?”
“I don’t know,” Clancy replied. “But I’m pretty sure I can kill Clapper or Simmons with it, if I have to. Have you been inside yet?”
Chaco shook his head. “No,” he whispered. “But they’re in there. All of them.”
“Sierra? Fred?”
“Sierra, definitely, but I’m not sure about Fred. Also Jumlin, Simmons, and Clapper.”
Clancy almost couldn’t ask the next question. “Is she alive?”
“Can’t tell.” Chaco said.
Clancy tamped down his frustration. Patience had always been the key to his work, and he needed it now more than ever. “Let’s go,” he said, moving cautiously around the rocks until he could see the cave opening.
The entrance wasn’t huge, but clearly someone had worked to enlarge it. There were piles of rock and dirt to either side that hadn’t arrived there by natural processes. There was a sizeable heap of dead brush to one side, and drag marks showed that the debris had been used to disguise the cave opening, and had recently been pulled away to allow entry. The opening was low enough to require stooping, but Clancy was relieved to see he wouldn’t be forced to crawl—this would put him at a disadvantage, though it wouldn’t inconvenience Chaco in his current form. Chill air wafted from the dark opening, along with a faint odor of corruption that made Clancy’s hackles rise. Glancing at Chaco, he saw the coyote’s hair standing on end as well, and his ears were laid back tight against his head.
“I’m going in first,” Chaco said, and this made sense to Clancy. Chaco could move more swiftly and silently than he could, and Chaco could see better than he could in the dark. The coyote vanished into the cave like a shadow among shadows, and Clancy stepped in close behind.
Rose, Mama Labadie, and Kaylee pelted through the trees, slipping and sliding in places, but never faltering. Rocks and tree roots might reach to trip them, but when one tripped, another grabbed a hand or arm and yanked hard. They were too terrified to stop and look behind to see if the dragon’s-teeth army of stone figures and the skull-faced apparition were still in pursuit.
Eventually, a particularly sneaky tree root caught Kaylee’s fleeing foot and down she went before anyone could grab her. She bellyflopped, knocking the wind out of herself.
“Are you okay?” panted Rose, her sides heaving and sweat pouring down her face. She knelt next to Kaylee, who, struggling for air, couldn’t speak. All Kaylee could do was writhe in the dust and gasp like a landed fish.
Mama Labadie knelt, wrapped her arms around Kaylee and propped her up, staring wildly back at the way they had come. Now that the crashing and pounding of their flight had died away, the forest was silent. Not the silence that had descended just before they saw the apparition—this was the natural and everyday silence of a forest well away from the insistent cacophony of human civilization.
The women huddled on the ground, shaking, streaked with sweat and dirt. Once she was breathing again, Kaylee became aware that she had torn her jeans and her knee was seeping blood through a ragged hole in the denim. She noted this objectively, and flexed her leg to see if any more serious damage had been done. She winced. Sore, but nothing she couldn’t live with.
“Where did they go?” Rose whispered. Mama Labadie shook her head.
“I have no idea, but let’s not wait around for them,” she responded. “Do you think we should try to go back to the car?”
The idea found no favor with any of them. After a bit, they also realized they didn’t know how to get back to the car, even if they had wanted to return. They were, Kaylee realized with a nasty, sinking feeling, quite lost. She mentioned this aloud.
“Lost?” Rose exclaimed. “I am never lost.” She squinted up at the sun, which was nearly overhead. “See? The sun is nearly right above us. It’s almost noon. That means,” she hesitated. “That means that, um, the car is in that direction.” She pointed into the woods in what seemed to Kaylee to be the opposite direction from which they had run.
“No,” Kaylee argued, “we were running from that direction before I tripped.” She pointed in the opposite direction.
“Couldn’t be,” said Rose. “We ran east from the road, and you’re pointing east.”
“Do you have a compass?” asked Mama Labadie.
“I don’t need a compass. I know these things,” said Rose.
“I suppose you’re going to claim that you have Indian wilderness skills. Well, if that’s the case, all you have to do is follow our tracks back to the road,” suggested Kaylee.
“No need to get snotty,” said Rose. She stood up and brushed dust from her clothes. “And as it happens, yes, I do have Indian wilderness skills, as you put it.” She began to move around their resting place in a gradually widening spiral. After a few minutes of this, she abruptly stopped and came back to the other two. Her cheeks were rather pink beneath their coating of grime, Kaylee noted.
“Um, we didn’t leave any tracks,” Rose said.
“Huh? How could that be?”
“Well, the ground is covered with pine needles. Remember how slippery it was? We made a huge mess right there, where you slipped, but everywhere else, it just looks like, um, pine needles. No tracks.”
“Aren’t Indians supposed to notice all the little landmarks as they travel through the wilderness and all that?” asked Mama Labadie.
“I don’t know about you,” said Rose with dignity, “but I was running like hell, and I didn’t notice a damn thing.”
“Fair enough,” Kaylee admitted. “Neither did I!”
Eventually, they just picked a direction and started walking, still alert for sounds of pursuit or strange phenomena. Kaylee had dropped her pack in their flight, but Rose and Mama Labadie both had theirs, and they shared the water sparingly. It was hot, even in the shade of the pines, and though they didn’t voice their fears, all were worrying about having too little water to keep all three going for any length of time.
The sun had reached a position indicating three o’clock in the afternoon, according to Rose, when they came to a shallow hollow among the trees. Rough, gray rocks poked up from the pine needles around the edge of the hollow, and trees crowded closely on either side. However, the way was clear straight through the hollow and up the other side, so the three women scrambled down, creating a cloud of dust that added to the crust already coating their skin.
Kaylee was just thinking about how thirsty she was, when with a sliding rattle like pebbles pouring down the hollow of the world’s largest rainmaker, all three women slid into the hollow and disappeared as though the earth had swallowed them. The only evidence of their presence left behind was a cloud of dust that roiled up through the tree boughs like golden smoke.
Clancy stooped and entered the cave entrance behind Chaco. He paused inside for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. Chaco noticed this and paused as well, his black nose working, ears pricked.
They were in a narrow defile in the limestone rock. Daylight from the entrance prevented Clancy from seeing very far ahead, but it seemed quite shallow, ending only a few yards in front of them.
He pitched his whisper low. “Chaco, are you sure they’re in here? It looks like it ends just ahead of us.”
In reply, Chaco, moved forward. As Clancy watched, he passed behind a jutting stone that had appeared to be the back of the cave. Realizing that he couldn’t see the turn of the passage, Clancy followed, trying to keep his boots from scraping against the loose stones on the floor of the cave. To his ears, he sounded like an elephant taking a stroll.
“Could you be a little quieter?” Chaco hissed. “You sound like an elephant.” Clancy began to walk as softly as he could, placing each foot with painstaking care.
The cave passage turned several more times, always sloping down. By now Clancy was in complete darkness, trusting to Chaco to warn him if a hazard lay ahead. He moved blindly and with great caution, worrying that he might crack his head against the roof of the cave. He had been in caves where rocks hung well below the cave roof, posing just such a hazard—but at the time, he had been in well-traveled and well-lit tourist attractions. The memory of jutting stalactites and sudden drop-offs into hundreds of feet of nothingness forced him to move with agonizing slowness.
Finally, he felt, rather than heard, Chaco’s return to his side. Then, a soft whisper, “Just around the next bend. You’ll see some light. Keep to the left—the left, got that? If you go to the right, they’ll never find you.”
Great, thought Clancy. This just gets better. He put out his hand to touch the left side of the passage, which seemed to grow wider here. His right hand could no longer touch the other side. He inched along, still striving for silence. Chaco moved forward just in front of him; Clancy could feel the brush of the coyote’s tail against his knees. As Chaco had said, he began to see a faint glow ahead that grew brighter with each step. Now he could see Chaco, his fur picked out in the growing light.
Then he could see a much larger space ahead, lit with wavering light. After the complete blackness of the cave, it seemed as bright as day, though the light flickered as though from a fire. Again, he stood still for a few moments to let his eyes adjust. He was standing in a niche just to the left of the widening hall. To the right of the opening was impenetrable blackness; Clancy wondered if there was a precipice hidden in that engulfing darkness. He stood just outside the reach of the light, peering onto a large cavern, or hall. First, he saw the torches in their sconces, then the painted murals. This is the stone hall of Sierra’s nightmares, he thought. It’s real, then. He felt ashamed; he had never really believed they were anything more than disturbing dreams. He hung back, trying to see more, letting the darkness of the cave conceal him.
If this was a nightmare, it was his nightmare, too. There was the stone altar, fronting a vast, black sheet of stone. An obsidian mirror, Clancy thought, incredulously. Two indistinct figures were bending over something on the floor. They were talking, quarreling, it seemed to Clancy from the tone. He tried to catch the words.
“…that you let it escape. It was in there the last time I had anything to do with it!” said a female voice. That was Jenna; he’d know that knife-edged tone of displeasure anywhere. He had himself been its target from time to time.
“Shut up, Jenna,” said to the other, and he recognized Clapper. Where the hell was Jumlin? Behind him, in the dark? The thought made him turn and scan the blackness behind him, but nothing stirred. Chaco crowded at his feet, quivering, tense, but silent.
The two figures tugged at the thing on the ground, which let out a whimper of pain. Sierra! At least she’s alive.
“Just cut the ropes, Clapper,” Jenna said. “It’s taking too long. That thing is on the loose, and I don’t want to have to deal with it, too.” She seized something from the altar and held it out to Clapper. Clancy saw the torchlight glittering darkly off its surface.
“You’re the one wearing gloves,” responded Clapper unpleasantly. “You do it.”
Without another word, Simmons bent to the bundle on the floor and began sawing at it, which almost made Clancy burst from his concealment outside the hall, until he realized Simmons was cutting the ropes that bound Sierra. She finished the job and pulled Sierra roughly to her feet. Sierra staggered, off balance. Simmons quickly grabbed one arm and Clapper the other, and they forced her toward the altar. Simmons was holding something to Sierra’s throat, and Clancy could now see it was a gleaming black stone knife. He had seen flaked obsidian weapons before, and handled them; he knew they could be sharper than razors.
The trio staggered toward the altar, Sierra obviously making herself a dead weight as much as possible. She aimed a feeble kick at Simmons, but the woman easily avoided it.
“Take your best shot, Carter,” Simmons said, and laughed. Sierra took a deep breath and—at last—found within herself a core of surging flame.
It was at that moment the roof caved in.
Chapter 34
It started as a deep groaning, as though the cavern itself were moaning in pain. As the groaning echoed in the vast hall, a few stones dropped from the ceiling, clattering on the floor, and everyone looked up, including Chaco and Clancy. A few moments of silence followed, then with a roar, a round hole opened, releasing an avalanche of stones, dirt, and debris quite close to the altar, but missing both it and the people standing so close to it.
Dust billowed up, and as fine grit and debris continued to pour from above, Chaco and Clancy darted forward. The air was so thick with dust that they couldn’t see Sierra or the other two, and Chaco’s sensitive nose was useless. The torches were extinguished, adding to the murk.
Finally, Clancy saw Sierra. Dribbles of pine needles and dirt were still falling from the hole, but now daylight was pouring down from the world above, lighting the dust-laden interior of the cavern with clouds of gold. Sierra was choking and coughing, but she had an arm firmly wrapped around another figure, which proved to be Simmons. The wicked obsidian blade was now in Sierra’s hand, held high against Simmons’ throat. Sierra’s dark hair was ashy with dust, and blood ran down the side of her head.
“Are you okay?” gasped Clancy. His mouth felt as though he had been licking sand, and his nostrils burned. As Sierra nodded, he began searching for Clapper, who was nowhere to be seen.
“We need to get out of here,” Chaco said. He had shifted to human shape, apparently to remove his mouth and nose as far as possible from the choking dust filling the cavern. “It’s dangerous. Let’s go!”
Simmons made a convulsive jerk away from Sierra, with the result that the edge of the stone blade scored a shallow wound on the side of her throat. She hissed like a scalded cat.
“Hey!,” snapped Sierra, resettling her grip on Simmons—and on the knife. “Don’t jerk around like that. Where’s Clapper? We can’t just leave him here.”
“He’s dead,” snarled Simmons. “Get me out of here!”
“Where’s Jumlin?” asked Clancy. We know he’s in here.”
Simmons shook her head. “Dead. Get me out of here!”
Sierra looked uncertainly at Clancy. “We don’t know that he’s dead,” she began, but then all eyes were drawn to movement under the mound of pebbles, rocks, dirt, and pine needles on the floor. Rising up from the mound was a monstrous shape, almost wider than it was tall, with many limbs that it was using to crawl away from the rubble.
