The Spirit

by Thomas Page

  The face contorted into something resembling hatred. The head swirled with greasy smoke from the candle.

  The Indian stepped warily back, planning to sink the arrow in its chest in one quick movement.

  The giant flicked out his arm with the speed of a striking cobra. He splashed out the candle in a sizzle of hot fat as the Indian loosed his arrow and heard it clatter along the floor.

  The Indian stepped down the tunnel and kneeled on the floor, covering the doorway. The giant walked out. The Indian fired an arrow into its leg.

  The giant walked away from him up the tunnel, the arrow bouncing like a poorly attached pin. His hand grasped it, pulled it free, and threw it away. The next arrow sank into his shoulder. He pulled out that one and crumpled it.

  The Indian drew a third arrow and walked up the tunnel too. Blood glittered on the floor. The giant did not try to run. He did not turn to attack. He merely walked steadily up past the smokeroom as the Indian coughed his way along behind.

  The giant paused at the small grave and looked down at it. Then he doused one of the candles, cutting the light severely. Then he entered one of the cubicles, and the Indian heard him moving equipment.

  The Indian waited with growing puzzlement, with the string pulled back till it bisected his nose. The giant backed slowly out of the cubicle carrying a wooden box.

  “Look at me,” said the Indian.

  The giant looked at him. Through the peepsight of the bow, he saw the fading, flecked paint on the box reading DYNAMITE. The giant raised the box high over his head, ready to smash it to the ground.

  He was killing himself! Next to the grave of the child. The last natliskeliguten, the one that Coyote missed, was ending his own life without the Indian’s help.

  The Indian released the arrow and dropped to the floor without seeing where it went. He heard the box smash on the rocks, then the soft plop of an explosion that blew dynamite tubes over the floor. These exploded on impact with lazy, weakened detonations that pulled the walls and ceiling down around the giant.

  When the Indian looked up he saw a groaning mass of rock blocking off the tunnel. One last light wavered on the shaft. Guttural rumbles sounded from deep within the walls.

  The Indian leaped up and ran down the tunnel as the collapsing ceiling sent a plug of concussed air down the shaft, dousing the lights.

  He snatched a handful of smoldering hickory sticks from the smokeroom, their weak light the only illumination to be found in the mine. He was running down the shaft, deeper into the mountain, holding the sticks aloft like flags, when thousands of tons of granite, limestone, slate, and lastly that vein of copper ore for which those rabid miners had searched in vain, came down in a long, trembling, settling, endless crunch like jaws grinding together.

  Jones and Wallace were cranking gears up the back road into Oharaville when they heard the rocks coming down. They knew immediately that Colby was collapsing, fatally weakened by the shafts inside her.

  Wallace grabbed the microphone and cried, “Avalanche! The mountain’s coming down!”

  “Ten four,” Drake answered in a calm voice. “Take care of yourselves.”

  Wallace whined into Oharaville and turned hard left up Bullion Avenue. The rockslide piled down over the mine entrance and the mass following propelled stones and trees into the air which rained down on the buildings. The truck windshield splintered, and rocks drummed on the roof. The buildings swayed and creaked under the onslaught of stone and storm. The SALOON sign flipped to the ground like a playing card as the roof was holed through, over and over. To Jones it sounded as if a hundred men were clearing the town away with axes.

  The rain of rocks ceased, leaving a smell of mud which dispersed before the wind. Wallace knew that where the shaft entrance had been was now a featureless mass of muddy rubble whose edges encroached on Bullion Avenue. With a final crack, the church steeple disintegrated over the roof.

  They listened to the slide continuing over the rest of the mountain. Jones called up Drake on the radio. “We’re in Oharaville, and that’s as far as we’re going tonight. The lodge road is totaled over.”

  “Was there a slide on the east face, too?”

  “Do fish live in the sea?” retorted Jones. “That lodge doesn’t stand a chance. It’s not so bad in Oharaville, because we’re high up. I bet it’s taken out most of Hulcher Road on the south, too.”

  “Ten four. Wait till things settle down, then try to get to the lodge on foot. It looks like we’ll have to mount a rescue.”

  The mountain’s thunderstorm belches faded away by degrees. They would rig lines, bosun’s chairs, and a tem­porary bridge to traverse the gorge, Wallace reflected. Then they would rush to the lodge to find it gone. If they were lucky they would find bodies, too, but he would not bet a hog’s wart on that.

  16

  The avalanche hit the lodge like a gigantic ax, chopping away the roof and sun-­deck timbers and burying them on their way down the east face. Dust materialized out of the walls in a shroud that fuzzed the candlelight. The ceiling split over the door, disgorging plaster, asbestos insulation rolls, and electrical wiring. The rest of it shivered under the hammer of rocks. Cracks appeared and raced out to link up with each other. Duane Wood­ard scrambled under a table with Jason when his section of ceiling split and dumped muddy snow and the crumpled fender of Helder’s Cadillac on his table.

  The avalanche muted to a sibilant hiss of smaller stones and straggler trees. Sheet ice from snow melted by friction and refrozen by the storm oozed through the ceiling gaps. The groans faded, and the walls of the game room held.

  Duane Wood­ard and Jason moved the billiard table and pinball machine from the door. They opened it slowly, ducking debris cascading in. The corridor was now a parallelepiped, with angles of ceiling and wall bent toward the east. It was clogged with rocks, plywood, more insulation, and mud. The stairs led upward to nothing; the ground floor was a mass of rubble.

  “Everybody all right?” asked Jason. “Martha?”

  “Fine,” she answered in a tired voice. “What happened?”

  “A mountain fell down on top of us. That’s what happened, lady,” grunted Wood­ard. He joined Jason by the rubble and looked at the stairs leading nowhere. “Half a mountain, anyhow. I bet that Indian had something to do with this.”

  “No takers,” commented Jason. “Drake said that mine was full of old dynamite. Maybe he lit a stick and threw it at the thing.” He looked back at Martha Lucas. “Or something like that.”

  She remembered Moon’s dark, fathomless face as he had looked at the leering grizzly earlier that night. A stuffed grizzly. A skin full of cotton. A spirit that wasn’t a spirit. When the gods died, so did the worshippers.

  The furnace door was jammed open by a crushed door frame. Jason said, “Do you smell something?”

  Wood­ard wiped his nose on his sleeve and sniffed. “Fuel oil, ain’t it? The tank must have busted.”

  “Martha, what’s in there?”

  “Generators,” she whispered. “Water tanks. Stuff like that. There’s a door leading—”

  Jason hissed and held out his hand for quiet. A small, liquid tap came from the door. A splashy tap. It was followed by another, and mad joy seized Jason like a drug rush that overwhelmed his tension. “It’s her,” he whispered. “She must have got in before the avalanche hit.”

  Jason found his gun on the floor. He slipped on his jacket and put the extra box of shells in the pocket. Then he grasped Martha’s arm and pulled her to her feet. “Upstairs. You and Wood­ard. Get going!”

  “Leave her alone, Jason,” said Wood­ard in a cool, low voice.

  “No way. You hear me, Wood­ard?” Jason’s eyes were wild.

  Wood­ard peered down the hall at the furnace room. “I don’t know about that. Somebody ought to back you up . . .”

  “I don’t need an
ybody’s help.”

  Wood­ard glanced at Martha and scratched unhappily at his chin, wondering how to handle the situation. “Mr. Jason, I know I hit her a couple of times with the twenty-two.”

  “Spitballs, Wood­ard! Twenty-­two-­caliber spitballs!” He held up his .38. “Couple of these. That’s what it takes.”

  “Then let the Rangers do it,” pleaded Martha. “Forget it, Raymond, you’ve gone far enough with this.”

  “She killed Helder, didn’t she?” said Jason, stung by her tone. “And you. She nearly got you—”

  “What do you care!” Martha cried. “I mean, what the hell do you care about me or Helder or Moon or anybody but yourself?”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  “You’ve been shooting them, you’ve been stalking them, you’ve been setting traps for them . . .” Her voice rose. “It’s your fault they’re killing people, Raymond, it’s not them, it’s you! Moon was right, you’re just like him! What do you want from them! You’re—”

  Jason slapped her.

  “None of that, Jason!” said Duane Wood­ard, picking up a broken chair.

  Jason made a motion with the gun. “Everybody calm down. You stay put, Wood­ard. She’s hysterical. Look at her! Take her upstairs.”

  Martha walked past Jason to the corridor. Wood­ard tossed away the chair with a grimace. “It’s okay by me. Hell, you want a Bigfoot rug that bad—”

  “I do. I’ll be up with one in ten minutes.”

  “Yeah.” Wood­ard sounded unconvinced.

  Another small tap from the furnace room. She was still there.

  He found a flashlight in one of the drawers. The cold had numbed his fingers, and he had to exercise them to get the circulation going. Firing a handgun was a matter of wrist control. Dozens of tiny interlocking muscles determined whether a shot went true.

  Jason breathed deeply in anticipation. He was in control now. After tonight he would relax completely. Nothing could possibly go wrong now. The bullets were notched and would mushroom on impact. That female was dead.

  His search was over.

  He loosened the flashlight lens to throw as wide a beam as possible. He tiptoed over the rubble to the furnace door. He could feel the gigantic presence inside as palpably as his nose smelled the fuel oil.

  He kneeled before the doorway, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other. From the furnace room came the wet clink of something hitting a pipe. He clicked on the light.

  And cried out in shock. She was six feet in front of him, a rock clutched in a raised arm, eyes flashing green from the light.

  Jason rolled aside from the doorway. The rock did not fly out. Rather, she moved into the deeper recesses of the furnace room, her feet making sticky sounds in the black layer of fuel oil that coated the entire floor.

  She had a horned face, just like the male, with that fixed thin smile. Jason thought he glimpsed a bloody hole on her shoulder, with tangled fur.

  Inside a rock clanged against a pipe.

  What was she doing?

  Jason jumped in the doorway, squatting, light flashing around. The room was full of humps of machinery and heavy pipes. One of the humps scuttled behind another one, and again he heard a rock click against metal.

  A huge, long-­fingered hand poked out from behind the furnace and snatched a rock. She rapped it against a pipe, causing a spark. Flint against metal. She struck it against another rock. Flint against stone. She was making fire. She was going to reduce the wreck of the lodge to ashes. Scatter the ashes on the wind and clean the wind with incantations.

  Jason cocked the pistol. He moved sideways, trying to slip behind her. His feet made wet sounds on the fuel oil. He cut off the light and got behind a pipe as she struck at another rock. This time she got a sizable spark, which pinpointed her position for Jason.

  He fired. The bullet struck the concrete floor, rico­cheting to the ceiling, striking a spark of its own that ignited the fuel oil. Fire fluffed gently up, covering her escape as she crashed out the door leading outside. It scurried like a hungry ripple into every hiding place, every corner formed by floor, wall, and machinery.

  Dammit! Jason felt the fire’s heat on his legs as he scrambled to the door and fired at the huge figure running into the trees. Snow spouted from the bullet at the edge of the woods. Stunned and shattered by missing her again, Jason stood just outside the lodge as the flames poured gritty smoke around him.

  “Come on, Mr. Jason.” Wood­ard and Martha each grabbed an elbow and sleepwalked Jason to a safer part of ground. The storm had lessened, as though its energy had been mysteriously used up by the avalanche. The fire ate away at the timbers of the gallery like a parasite, determined to chew at its host despite the wind.

  The ski chairs had been carried down the slope by the rockslide. They moved to the parking apron as sparks rode the wind down the road. From there they could see well into the woods, which were illuminated by the flames.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. “She got away,” mumbled Jason.

  “Yeah, that was a real neat stunt, Jason,” said Wood­ard. “You with a gun in the same room with her and she gets away. You just ain’t cut out to be a hunter, Jason.”

  “She was wounded,” he said dully. “She can’t get much further.”

  “Raymond, put the gun away. The Rangers are coming.”

  The snow had cleared sufficiently for them to see a line of snowmobile lights far down in the valley. Someone had crossed the bridge already and was on the way up.

  Drake, probably, coming up for an explanation. Have we been shooting at Bigfoots again, Mr. Jason? I see. And how many people are dead in the van? I see. And Mr. Helder, too?

  “It’s not my fault,” Jason said clearly. The floor of the lodge caved into the fire, sending up a cataract of sparks. The heat warmed the surface of Jason’s coveralls. “They’re half people. That’s why they’re killers.”

  “Raymond, put the gun away,” said Martha Lucas again through clenched teeth. “Who gives a damn what they are?”

  “The male is dead. She’s the last one.” Jason made a move for the woods. Martha grabbed his sleeve.

  “You don’t know that! She could be waiting in there to ambush you. Maybe the male’s alive, maybe the avalanche didn’t have anything to do with Moon—”

  Jason twisted free of her hands. He could hear the noise of the snowmobiles already. Maybe she was watching the fire. Maybe she was just inside the trees right now, just a few yards away. This time! This time! He felt better now with every step he took. “I’ll be back with a body in an hour,” he called cheerfully back to Martha Lucas.

  “Raymond, you’ll never get them!”

  She was a nice girl but she was a mystical Cassandra, which was an attitude he had never sympathized with. Not that he did not admire her still for her fortitude, but his admiration curdled a bit. He disliked being lectured.

  Raymond Jason scrambled over the rocks and shattered, tumbled trees well past the fire. On a birch trunk he found a splash of blood thickened by snowflakes, and another one farther on. She had left a trail that all but glowed in the dark.

  He slipped the hood over his head and followed the blood into the timbers.

  The Indian ran through the bowels of the night, guiding the way with the feeble light from the smoldering branches. He did not run to escape to earth again; he ran because he would go insane in this tomb if he paused to think. He was a rat in a maze of stone, a piece of flesh who would thrash away down here, screaming away his mind, running forever into the depths of hell itself without his spirit, without a faith. His flesh-­and-­blood body would starve in darkness, sealed away forever from light and life.

  Sometimes he ran full tilt into rockfalls. Sometimes he nearly broke his ankles over fallen beams. Once he nearly pitched headlong into a pit, which was actually another tunnel opening beneath him.
r />   The tunnels held in the center of the mountain. Here the rock was so deep that surface water did not weaken it. But the collapse had filled them all with a fine soft dust, which grated the nose and lungs.

  The hickory shafts smoldered ever smaller, and he stopped blowing on them in order to conserve light a little longer. When they were ashes, he decided, he would dash his head against a boulder and die quickly. He had already tried carving a piece of timber from a beam cut for a torch, but the wood was too hard to catch fire.

  Sometimes he tried to pray to his grandfather for help, but he barely remembered the old man. Under the irresistible weight of his predicament, his mind was unfastening the latches to reality which the doctors in the Army had tried so hard to repair. Sometimes he thought he was back in the jungle, but more often he thought he was dead already. Perhaps he had died in Vietnam and this was where he had gone.

  He thought about why the giant had killed himself. It had looked at the child’s grave before pulling out the dynamite. The last one was dead, the future was dead for its kind. Some kind of grief had consumed it. The great dim brain had concluded that life was not worth living any more. The Indian was now experiencing that kind of despair.

  He was in a high-­ceilinged tunnel, running up a slight incline. The hickory sticks flared, then faded.

  What was that?

  The Indian halted and looked at the hickory coals. The sticks had burned down almost to his wrist. They glowed again. This time he felt the caress of cold, fresh air coming from ahead of him.

  He walked slowly, holding the light high. He passed a pile of rubble on the floor.

  The sticks glowed again. This time the air touched his back.

  Oh God, not a trick! Not a playful wind spirit running around him.

  He backtracked to the pile of rubble and touched the rocks. There was a layer of melted snow on them. Snow touched the top of his head. He looked up.

  The ceiling was some eleven feet high, supported by rocky, irregular walls. In the center of it, several feet from the junctures between walls and ceiling, was a three-­foot hole.