Land of Echoes

by Daniel Hecht

Above, someone slipped on rolling gravel. She looked to see two more shapes coming quickly down the ravine and she knew she had to run now or she would lose her resolve and something terrible would happen to Brother.

  She leapt down from her shelter and scrambled to the rock dam in confusion, smashing her front into the boulders, then climbing and stumbling and falling among the rocks, bruising her hands. The rocks were all wrong. She rammed both knees into a jagged slab and fell heavily, twisting her body just in time to take the impact on her shoulder. It stunned her, but in an instant she was up again, scrabbling on all fours over the fall and tumbling to the smoother floor of the ravine.

  The big noise was there, out on the desert. The evil people were coming. She had to run now. Below, a shape moved out on the sunset-lit desert and she knew it was Brother. And he had caught one of the goats, he was running with it on a rope. She ran out of the ravine mouth to call to him, Shinaai, don't go for the goats, come back! but that was foolish because he had already caught one, he already knew the danger and was running back. Back in the ravine, the men were crying out in alarm and anger.

  She had almost reached Brother when part of him broke away, part of his head was gone in an instant and suddenly he was splayed out on the sand and the goat was running away trailing its tether. And then the goat stumbled and rolled, shuddering and kicking its feet in the air as if savaged by an invisible predator. Far away across the ground, she saw the other goat running toward the south and then, panicked, change its mind and turn back. She knelt by Shinaai and knew that the monster that ate people and took them away had taken him. It was too evil to bear. She stood and ran at it, raging and cursing it, but something bit her leg like a dog or wolf. It tugged just once but so hard she fell to her knees. When she looked down her thigh was open, burst like a shattered gourd. And she shouted up at the horsemen a curse on their lives and clans forever and then her belly and chest burst, too. She fell on the sand and lay as the stamping hooves danced briefly around her and then moved on out of view, toward the ravine. She wanted to turn her head to see what was happening there, but she couldn't move. She lay looking along the ground, out toward the empty desert, a sideways red-lit plane where even the grains of sand were huge and frighteningly vivid. Unable to move her body, she felt her mind and heart fling outward, love and warning and apology snapped like an arrow from a bow, back toward the ravine where the family was. She heard the guns there and then she heard and saw nothing.

  She awoke to find herself a hundred yards from the mouth of the ravine, lying facedown on coarse sand. It took her a long moment to regain herself, give herself a name: Lucretia Black. It wasn't sunset, it was deepest night. She sat up quickly and winced as all the pains came at once, the bruised shins and elbows and wrenched shoulder. She straightened and felt every vertebra kink and complain. She got to her feet and swayed for a moment, deeply chilled. After a moment, she thought to push the glow button on her watch, and found that it was after two in the morning.

  Two people had died on this spot. She was too battered and numb to examine the experience in detail, but she sensed they were young, a girl of around thirteen and her brother, a little older. The girl had called him Shinaai. He had gone to retrieve the runaway goats against the family's instructions, and she had followed to bring him back, also against orders. They'd been shot by someone the girl thought of as the New People and the Enemy People: men on horses, many of them, enough to make that awful, air-quivering thunder of hooves and motion and manic energy.

  She did a quick inventory and admitted that she was beat to crap, that she'd done all she could for now. She absolutely had nothing left, emotionally or physically.

  But the wrong of it! The lingering sense of the girl's last bitter instant fired her, and she sat back down, suppressed her sobs, and stubbornly ordered herself to stillness. She willed it to come again: demanded that the ghost cycle through its manifestation, commanded herself to find and tolerate the echoes of that life and death. Insisted that the rocks give up their secrets. Whatever, however the hell it worked.

  But of course you couldn't force it. You couldn't find it if it wasn't there or if you weren't ready. After fifteen more minutes, she accepted the obvious and got creakily to her feet.

  She limped up the ravine to retrieve the backpack and blanket. Climbing over the rock dam again, she thought about the spatiotemporal divergence she'd experienced on her way down, during her urgent rush to warn her brother. The rocks impeding Cree's passage didn't exist in the world of the girl whose final moments she'd experienced; clearly the avalanche that had brought this tumble down hadn't been there when the girl had lived. Her stumbling efforts to clamber over the rocks when half her world didn't contain them brought home just what Tommy must be experiencing when the entity was active in him. It explained the confusion of his labored attempts to climb through the corral fence, or to come down off the examining table: spatiotemporal double vision.

  She made it to the niche and stuffed her things into the backpack, then sat for a moment in the dead silence of the night. Not seeking or expecting anything to happen, just scraping together enough energy to walk back to the school.

  But something was happening.

  Ice crystals tingled in her veins: There was a noise. It had started subliminally and grew imperceptibly until it demanded notice and then it was undeniable. At first, a distant mosquito, and now a big, resounding noise, echoing up from the mouth of the ravine.

  She tucked herself back into the little hollow, trying to analyze the sound as it swelled and Dopplered between the walls. For a horrible moment she thought she'd slipped back, she'd lost her grip on her self and her present and was being drawn unwillingly back to that murderous past.

  But as the noise grew she recognized it. Not horses. A motor.

  A bright light panned the south wall of the mouth of the ravine, bouncing, veering, then skidding upward along the south cliff wall toward her. Two close-set, brilliant beams flashed up the cleft, straight into her eyes, and she jerked her head back. For another few seconds the lights stayed motionless, cutting the rock walls nearby into harsh light and shadow. And then they went out. The engine died.

  Someone was there. At the mouth of the ravine. On some kind of all-terrain vehicle.

  She tipped her head and peered into the darkness below. The blue transparency of the night was gone. Purple blotches and a pair of searing lavender orbs swam in her vision and she couldn't see anything until someone turned on a flashlight, panning it left and right. Somebody was coming up on foot.

  Cree slipped the pack straps over her shoulders, waited until the light vanished momentarily, and then jumped down. She landed on all fours and stayed in a deep crouch, where the rockfall below sheltered her from the flashlight's direct beam. She heard the scrape of boots and a rattle of stones as someone moved closer. The beam came up the ravine again, lighting the cliff just over her head.

  Staying on all fours, she scrambled as high as the shadows allowed, then froze. The shadows swayed and shifted as the flashlight moved, and then it grew dark where she was. She risked a glance back. Whoever it was had reached the lower side of the rock dam and was pointing the flashlight down. Moving it around, left and right, as if looking for footing.

  She took the opportunity to lizard-crawl twenty feet higher. Another ten feet ahead was a fallen sandstone slab big enough to keep her out of view. She leapt for it, stumbled, knocked some loose stones together with a clatter that seemed deafening. She rolled into the embrace of shadow and lay awkwardly half on top of the backpack, cupping her hands over her mouth to muffle her breathing.

  Whoever it was had climbed onto the rocks and was shining the flashlight up the ravine, panning it systematically. Looking for the source of the noise! Cree lay unmoving, shaken by her pounding heart, afraid to lift her head to check whether her feet were out of view, afraid to pull her knees up lest the movement attract attention.

  After an endlessly suspended moment, the light dipped again. S
he pulled in her legs, cramming herself behind the canted slab. From the scuffle of boots, it didn't sound as if the person was coming any closer, and at last she dared to tip her head out to look.

  Someone was moving around on the rockfall, shining the flashlight down at the jumbled boulders and stones. Cree was only sixty feet away, but all she could see was the brilliant circle of light and the rugged surfaces of the rocks it illuminated. Back and forth. Somebody was looking for something. A very systematic inspection.

  She watched for several minutes, trying to decide what she would do if whoever it was came higher. There would be no opportunity to run farther up without being seen, no protection from the light. She could wait behind her slab, leap up, clop whoever with a rock. Or maybe she should use the pepper spray. If she could just get the jump on whoever it was—

  The movement of the light changed. The person was coming this way again. Whoever it was came down off the rock dam on the uphill side. Cree groped in the pack for the pepper spray. She brought the can out and positioned her finger on the spray button, mentally rehearsing what she'd have to do.

  But the flashlight didn't approach. The person appeared to be inspecting the base of the rockfall, taking time, looking into cracks and gaps. With the glow of the rocks behind it now, she could see the whole black silhouette of the visitor for the first time, and she let slip a gasp of surprise as she recognized the shape. After another few minutes, the light went out and there was silence. Cree saw the flare of a match, quickly extinguished and replaced by the glow of a cigarette. In another moment, the smell of tobacco wafted up. For a time she couldn't see or hear anything, but then she heard the scrape of boots again, up and over the rock dam, fading.

  The engine of the ATV cranked and revved, the headlights washed the ravine and panned and disappeared. The retreating wedge of light swept to the right, and the red taillights zipped out of view to the north. The engine noise swelled and faded and was gone.

  North, she thought. The direction from which evil comes.

  She waited for a long time in the darkness, still afraid to move. At long last, she stood and began a limping half walk, half run back to the school and sanity. Her nerves shrieked with tension. She went stealthily, watchfully, ready to dart for cover if there was any indication Donny McCarty's thug, Nick Stephanovic, was coming back.

  40

  WEDNESDAY MORNING, bright and clear, not yet nine o'clock. Cree had showered, but she hadn't slept and was tired and wired beyond anything she could remember. Earlier, she had called Paul in New Orleans, deliberately dialing his office number so she'd get his answering machine, and left a message saying she'd be out of touch for a few days, don't worry if she didn't call. Then she had called ahead to the Navajo Nation Inn to let Joyce and Edgar know she was coming. It would be a short conference, and they wouldn't like what she had to tell them.

  The two of them were already waiting in Edgar's room, where the curtains were pulled wide, filling the room with sunlight. The TV was on with the sound off: some morning news show featuring clips of missiles taking off, then somber talking heads, then some more armaments doing their thing.

  "You got a coffeemaker in here?" Cree asked.

  "It's already made." Edgar poured her a cup from the little carafe and Cree took it greedily, swigged it, scalded her tongue and was glad for the pain.

  "Long night?" Joyce inquired. Deadpan understatement serving as accusation.

  "And getting longer by the minute."

  "So you haven't slept at all?"

  "Let's sit, we've got a lot of ground to cover and then I've got to get going."

  They sat reluctantly, giving each other dubious glances.

  "Here's the deal. I know where Tommy is, and I have the family's permission to see him. I've got to go, this morning. From what Joseph Tsosie says, he's losing ground fast. The state Child Protective Services people are looking for him, the doctors want to try potentially damaging drug therapies on him, Julieta's going to pieces, and Donny McCarty is eager to make some shit for Julieta and the school for reasons I don't—"

  "Cree," Edgar broke in. "Slow down. You're really wound up."

  Cree inhaled, counted to three, and went on: "Tommy's aunts and uncles and cousins are on shifts taking care of him, but they may not be able to do much. That . . . paralysis, or whatever the hell it is, is getting stronger—"

  "And into the breach steps Cree Black to single-handedly save the day," Joyce said witheringly.

  "Don't, Joyce. Don't even bother. I've got to get to him and try to make contact with whatever's in him, and I've got to do it immediately. I'll be leaving here and going to the sheep camp where they've taken him. The grandparents' place is two hours' drive from here, the roads are supposed to be a bitch, and the camp is some miles beyond that. So I can't go back and forth."

  "Meaning we're not coming with you," Edgar clarified.

  "I can't explain the dynamics right now, Ed! There's cultural stuff, there's racial stuff, there are family issues, it's all very complex territory and we're lucky they're letting even me see him. I will certainly ask if you can come, but I doubt they'll go for it. I'd like to put the FMEEG on him as much as you would, but there's no power source for it up there anyway."

  She took another breath as they stared at her. She inhaled again and tried to find the brake pedal and put her thoughts in order. Looking down at the half-drunk cup in her hand, she saw the ebony surface shivering with concentric rings as her jangly energy conveyed itself to the liquid. The image teased her memory, and after a second then she placed it: Jurassic Park—that glass of water, trembling with the approaching footsteps of T. Rex.

  "You want to tell us what happened last night?" Ed asked gently. He glanced at her scraped hands and broken nails.

  "I went to the mesa, and don't bother bitching at me about it! There was an event out there, at least two people died, probably more. Two teenagers, a girl and a boy, trying to retrieve their family's goats. I assume they were Navajos. They were shot by horsemen. I saw it through the girl's eyes. I didn't pick up the brother at all. But the girl called him Shinaai."

  " Shot—guns or arrows?" Joyce's legal pad had materialized in her hands.

  Seeing that, Cree's momentum stumbled. She looked from Joyce to Ed, saw the concern in their faces and their resigned readiness to support her, and abruptly she loved them so much it hurt. It took her a moment to get her breath.

  "Guns," she said.

  "Any chance either the boy or the girl is our entity?"

  "Not the girl. But the boy or another family member, I'd say a very good chance."

  "But . . . what's the link to Tommy?" Ed asked. "What's he got in common with those ghosts?"

  "I don't know yet. I need to get something more from Tommy, or I need some historical background that'll steer me. Have you made any headway on the mesa, Joyce?"

  Joyce shook her head. "Sorry, Cree. I kept at it after we went to the mine yesterday, but nothing. History teachers up at Dinê College and UNM, the people at Gallup Historical Society—nobody knew bupkes about that mesa. I looked at a couple of old maps from the 1800s, but it isn't marked on them. I still have a few leads left to follow up, but I'm not holding my breath."

  "Okay. Well, make it top priority today. From what you've learned about the history of the area, do you have any general ideas about what could have happened, or when?"

  "Hmm. Horses would mean post-1540 at the least, and probably later. The combination of guns and horses would suggest it's something more recent, closer to the American era, like mid-1800s. Could be an event from intertribal raiding, maybe Utes or Apaches. Or a slave raid by Mexicans, or some U.S. Army action. I don't know."

  " 'The New People,'" Cree muttered. " 'The Enemy People.' That's how she thought of them."

  Joyce puzzled, made a note.

  "What can I do?" Edgar put in. "The electrical system checks out as sound, there's nothing for us to learn there. Nothing that would help you now, in any case. I'd go t
o the ravine and do some technical work, but we're obviously past that point."

  "Help Joyce with the mesa. Somewhere there's got to be a record of what happened there."

  Ed nodded. Cree drained her cup, then stood and went to the coffeemaker. She poured the last splash and gulped it, trying to remember what else she needed to tell them.

  Joyce looked up from her notes, frowning. "What about the idea of the entity being Garrett McCarty? Is there anything Ed and I can do to verify or exclude that possibility?"

  "I don't know how, just now. But I had a disturbing moment yesterday afternoon. Julieta told me she's thought other kids at the school might be hers. That doesn't mean Tommy isn't her kid, but from where I sit it shoots a lot of holes in her . . . reliability as a witness. If it turns out he isn't her child, I don't see how the Garrett McCarty idea would hold much water."

  "Can we do something to determine, definitively, who Tommy is?" Edgar asked.

  "His birth records won't help. I'm hoping I can ask the relatives whether he was adopted. If they'll tell me anything. But we really need to look hard at the Keedays—Tommy's parents, adoptive or otherwise. Have you got any more on that, Joyce?"

  Joyce bobbed her head. "A little. Found the medical examiner's report. Thomas and Bernice Keeday, killed in a car crash up near Tuba City. Both had been drinking, but the father's blood alcohol was through the roof, like one point eight, so his last hours and moments would have been pretty cloudy. He was speeding, tried to avoid some cows on the road, drove into a boulder. Death was instantaneous for both of them—severe head injuries."

  "Night? Day?"

  "Night. Time of death ten fifty-eight p.m."

  Cree filed the information away. "Any theories about why one of them would come into Tommy at this point, at this place?"

  They both shook their heads.

  Cree was pacing aimlessly, frazzled and jittery, but stopped as Edgar stood and took her arm.

  "Cree. Before you go blasting out of here. Stop for one second. Stop and tell us, tell yourself, what you've got going for you out there. What you're bringing to the situation in the way of a plan or information. You don't know who the ghost is or what it wants, you don't even know who Tommy Keeday is."