Strong Cold Dead

by Jon Land

  Dylan continued along the circuitous route through the brambles and brush to White Eagle’s patch of land, set against the sparkling waterfall that drained into the pristine stream. The last thing he wanted was to alert the old man to his presence. The shack-like structure was located close enough to the woods for Dylan to investigate and be gone before White Eagle was any the wiser.

  The problem was that the night, coupled with the lingering effects of the slight dose of peyote he’d ingested, had stolen his bearings. The woods were suddenly a deep, dark place swimming with branches that looked like tentacles and tree roots that slithered about the ground like snakes.

  Dylan passed it all off as his imagination, until he heard the crackle of a branch crunching underfoot behind him. Then he wasn’t so sure anymore.

  64

  BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS

  At night, Caitlin realized, the waters of the stream dividing the Comanche reservation from the rest of the nature preserve looked green. A slight mist hung over the surface, seeming to vibrate in rhythm with the endless flow of the waterfall draining downward. When those waters had run stronger and deeper, their currents had forged a winding path that now snaked along the hillside.

  Guillermo Paz steered ahead of her and Cort Wesley as they drew closer to the mouth of the cave formations, which were dug out of the hillside along the narrow path. “These openings look man-made, used for shelter probably hundreds—even thousands—of years ago,” he said, as the three of them readied their flashlights and tested the beams.

  True to his impression, the six caves they examined, as they wound their way down the path from the higher reaches of the hillside, were small, with nothing of note in particular. More likely, Caitlin reasoned, Native Americans of old had cleared existing breaches to take advantage of natural shelters, explaining why archaeologists had been uncovering great finds in caves like this for decades. She figured there were probably plenty of similar finds in these as well, likely buried under layers and centuries of earth, stone, and sediment.

  The next and most jagged of the cave mouths opened into more of a passageway, which followed the flow of the stream waters, along a trench that wound its way farther underground. The walls glowed in dappled fashion with some sort of phosphorus extract the color of moss. In patches, it looked as if it was growing out of the walls, almost like tumors, or blights, on the landscape by the spill of their flashlight beams.

  “I recognize the smell from when we paid that visit to White Eagle,” Cort Wesley noted. “Air’s full of it. I also smelled it at the rez entrance, strong when the wind was blowing right.”

  The waters looked greener as they drew deeper into the cave. The widening path was taking them along a winding route that descended so gradually they didn’t even realize they were now venturing underground. The greenish water had lost its sheen; it was cloudy and murky toward the top, with patches of a dark, goo-like residue splotching the surface.

  “Looks like John D. Rockefeller was right, Ranger,” Cort Wesley noted. “That’s oil seep, from reserves flowing all the way up from the earth’s core, for all we know, dragging some methane with it for good measure.”

  “What about the deposits on the wall?”

  “That, I can’t explain,” Cort Wesley said, sweeping his gaze about the cave, “and I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “We’re missing something here,” Caitlin said suddenly, frustration getting the better of her.

  “Like what?”

  “Like this, maybe,” Paz called from ahead of them.

  Caitlin and Cort Wesley caught up to find the colonel pinning a Hershey’s bar wrapper to the ground under his boot.

  “A candy wrapper?”

  Both of them could see his eyes glowing like a cat’s.

  “A Hershey bar,” said Paz. “Daniel Cross’s apartment was covered in wrappers just like it.”

  “They were his favorite when he was a kid, too,” Caitlin said, as she tucked the candy wrapper inside the plastic evidence pouch she carried with her at all times. The partially crumpled foil was smeared with melted chocolate, reminding her of how Cross always needed to wipe his mouth with a towel after eating one, ten years ago. She’d forgotten how much time she’d actually devoted to the effort to redeem him, apparently having accomplished absolutely nothing. “So maybe it was Cross that Dylan saw lurking about the night before last, the night before Hoover’s Cooking.”

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Cort Wesley said, standing a bit back from her and Guillermo Paz. “You’re thinking whatever links Cross to ISIS is somewhere in this cave?”

  “You got a better explanation for how this got here?” Caitlin asked, holding the clear plastic evidence pouch out for him to see.

  “That’s assuming it belongs to him. Hershey wouldn’t be doing much business in these parts if Daniel Cross was the only one buying their candy bars.”

  “It’s him,” Paz said, staring farther into the cave. Its darkness was broken by splotchy pockets of translucence emanating from the green patches that grew out of the walls. “And there’s something down there. Straight ahead.”

  “All I see is a wall, Colonel,” said Caitlin, shining her flashlight straight ahead.

  Paz started forward warily, his spine stiff. “Sometimes our eyes deceive us, Ranger.”

  65

  BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS

  There was no one behind him—at least, no one Dylan could see. He thought maybe just the small bit of peyote he’d ingested had had a more pronounced effect on him than he realized. Had he imagined the sound of something being crunched underfoot? Had his drifting mind led him off his intended route, leaving him lost amid thousands of acres of protected deep woods?

  Dylan felt fear and panic reaching for him and barely avoided their grasp. He’d started out charting his direction by the stars, but those had quickly vanished under an onslaught of storm clouds that swallowed their twinkling guidance and drew a curtain before the direction in which he was headed. In that moment, this was the last place in the world he wanted to be. His damn father was right; he should be back at school in Providence, Rhode Island, where spring football practice was in full swing, instead of throwing his whole future into jeopardy.

  What the hell was I thinking?

  He hadn’t been, that was the problem. Maybe he was never going to learn to stop acting on impulse and feeling he had to adopt every stray who crossed his path—girls now, instead of lost animals. He had a sour taste in his mouth, which felt as if he’d just chewed some tree bark, and he flirted with the idea of turning around.

  But just then he heard the soft spray of the waterfall flowing down over White Eagle’s land, and he caught a glimpse of the stream, which glowed emerald green under the moon’s return from behind the clouds. The shedlike structure was closer to White Eagle’s cabin than Dylan had remembered. But there was no firelight to give away his presence, and no sign of stirring through the cabin’s windows.

  Dylan emerged from the tree cover, clinging as best he could to the darkest ribbons of the night to help shield his route to the shed. Sure enough, a lock hung from a heavy hasp secured across the shed’s frame. Closer inspection revealed that the logs forming the shed had been reinforced crossways, the way similar structures had been erected in World War II Japanese prison camps. Like those, this structure had been built with no spacing at all, no seams visible, even where the sides met and the peaked roof joined up with the shed’s frame.

  Dylan was trying to figure how to get the door open, but then a slight jostling of the old padlock revealed it wasn’t fastened. As quietly as he could manage, Dylan plucked the lock free and eased the door open wide enough to enter, then quickly sealed the door behind him.

  He switched on the small flashlight he’d brought along, aware of the rich pine smell, even though the structure was at least decades, if not generations, old. In that moment, Dylan became aware of a second scent, a musty, stale odor, like rancid cl
othes left sweaty in a gym bag for too long. It was almost enough to make him gag, and he reminded himself to breathe through his mouth. He swept the small flashlight’s thin beam about the shed walls, holding it on something that glinted slightly in the spill.

  “Holy shit,” he heard himself mutter, stuff falling into place faster than he could process it.

  He needed to get off this reservation now, needed to call Caitlin and his father. He swung around, feeling for the phone tucked into his pocket.

  And saw a face, streaked like a checkerboard, even with his own, as a hand that smelled like rancid mud closed over his mouth.

  66

  BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS

  “What do you see, Ranger?” Paz asked Caitlin, when they reached the rear of the cave.

  Caitlin and Cort Wesley both shined their flashlights across the jagged rock formation. “Rocks.”

  “So do I. But the rocks I see are more weathered than those forming the other walls. More weathered and also lighter, from exposure to the sun.”

  Paz eased his shoulder against the wall and began to push.

  “In ancient times, the Mayans would build false cave walls, meticulously matched to the faces around them. The Comanche, apparently, were more ambitious.”

  With that, the wall began to give under Paz’s steady thrust, breaking from the seam first in a sliver, then a crack, and finally in a chasm that allowed a noxious odor to flood outward on a surge of chilly air.

  “Any idea how old this is?” Caitlin asked, as the opening continued to widen.

  “Hard to say,” Paz told her, as she and Cort Wesley added their force to the task. “Hinged structures like this date back far longer than history tells us. But the ground clearance and attention to expansion suggests mid- to late nineteenth century.”

  “Right around the time Jack Strong was working that murder case here on the rez.”

  Paz led the way inside to the chamber revealed beyond, shining his flashlight ahead of him. The addition of Caitlin’s and Cort Wesley’s beams revealed the chamber to be about twelve feet square. The continued push of cold air told them that this part of the cave came complete with a venting passage to the outside, likely cut out of the ceiling. They were about to turn their attention there, when Paz’s beam illuminated something dangling from the back wall.

  “Looks like a manacle,” Cort Wesley noted, holding his beam upon it.

  Caitlin added her flashlight to reveal a rusted hunk of matching chain alongside it. Two more chains had been driven into the rock face, lower, at around knee level.

  “What is this,” she heard Cort Wesley say, “some kind of jail cell?”

  Paz’s beam crossed over four more sets of manacles. “Not likely, outlaw. Indian tribes were known for holding prisoners in chambers dug underground, not camouflaged in caves.”

  Caitlin pulled on a manacle, rattling the chain attaching it to the stone face. “What if they weren’t prisoners? What if this was about something else entirely?”

  “You’ve got that look, Ranger.”

  “You can’t see me, Cort Wesley.”

  “I don’t have to, to know you’ve got that look, the one that says you’re about to bite into something.”

  Caitlin released the dangling manacle and it banged against the rock with a slight clang. “That’s because—”

  She stopped when the chamber seemed to rumble, shift. Caitlin, Cort Wesley, and Paz all shined their flashlights upward, illuminating a dark river that seemed to be flowing overhead.

  “Uh-oh,” Cort Wesley muttered, in the last moment before the river came raining down upon them.

  67

  BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS

  One of the figures, painted in alternating strips of black and white, shoved a mouthful of dirt into Dylan’s mouth. He recognized the taste immediately, registering it was pure peyote, and refused to swallow. He tried to spit it out, but the figure shoved it farther down his throat. Dylan gagged, coughing some of the clump up but feeling the rest drop down his throat. He retched, struggling to breathe. He realized he was choking, in the last moment before he coughed up a black wad that looked like a fur ball. Then he was being half dragged, half carried from the shed.

  “What are you doing? Leave me alone.”

  Dylan hated the lameness of the words he heard himself utter, listening as if it were someone else’s voice. The peyote was already taking effect, the ground beneath him turning pillowy soft. He thought he was sinking in, the world and the night receding before his eyes. Was he even breathing? Had he really coughed up the peyote they’d forced down his throat?

  “I’m gonna fucking kill you…”

  The threat he managed to utter sounded no less lame. Dylan felt moments dominated by a thick haze wrapped around his consciousness, alternating with moments of intense clarity, which he seized upon to size up his situation. Six Comanche, whom he recognized as some of Ela’s cousins, the Lost Boys, had painted their entire faces and exposed parts of their bodies in alternating streaks of black and white, their eyes wildly intense as they dragged him off. They were shirtless, and Dylan noticed that sweat had caked up the paint, jumbling the colors together in portions of their upper arms and torso.

  “Let me go,” he heard himself say again, or maybe for the first time.

  Dylan wasn’t sure. He knew there was something he desperately needed to tell his dad, tell Caitlin. But now he couldn’t remember what it was, and he couldn’t remember where his phone was, either.

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, found he was somewhere else entirely. His boots were sliding across the leaf-dampened ground now, his feet entirely numb. He couldn’t feel his arms, either, and when he tried to wiggle his fingers it seemed they weren’t attached to his hands anymore. The sky above had become a vast open mouth framed between the clouds, lowering to swallow him.

  “Make it stop!” he thought he cried out, and then realized that something that tasted grimy and grubby, like a sweaty sock, had been stuffed into his mouth.

  Dylan heard himself mutter. There was a pressure building behind his eyes, like a vacuum cleaner was pulling air from his skull in a constant hiss, which left him with a fluttery sensation in his ears.

  “You have no place here,” said the Lost Boy who’d wedged the dirt-like clump of peyote into Dylan’s mouth. “You should’ve stuck to your own. Now, you go to your grave.”

  Fuck you, Dylan thought, but he couldn’t say it.

  More time and space had passed than he found himself able to calculate, the world changing entirely in what felt like the length of a breath. Every time he blinked, the world seemed to stay dark longer. And the next time he pried his eyes open, the Lost Boys were lashing him to a tree with what felt like baling wire.

  “Now, it comes for you,” the Lost Boy told him.

  It, Dylan repeated in his mind.

  The tree bark scratched against his flesh, through his shirt, and each breath exaggerated the bonds of the wire further. For a few moments, Dylan actually had to remind himself to breathe. Once, he felt his chin thump to his chest.

  Regaining consciousness after however long he’d been out, he saw that the Lost Boys were gone, the oily odor of the paint with which they’d streaked themselves hanging in the stagnant air like a dust cloud. Dylan heard himself breathing, inside his head. His eyes wanted to close again, but he stopped them, keeping his focus straight ahead until he heard something approaching from behind.

  Whatever was coming seemed to glide across the brush and earth, rustling them no more than the wind. Dylan tried to turn his head, but his neck wouldn’t budge. Then he realized the footsteps were upon him, in the same moment he heard himself screaming through his gagged mouth.

  68

  BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS

  The wave of bats descended on them like an unbroken black blanket. Suddenly jittery flashlight beams caught spokes of big eyes and flashing teeth, much bigger than they should have been, in Caitlin’s experience. F
irst backpedaling and then turning to dash out of the chamber, she thought this, too, was an illusion, until one of the bats latched onto her hair with claws that felt more like a raptor’s. And, as she yanked it off, taking a chunk of her scalp with it, Caitlin saw why.

  The bat was massive, huge, its wingspan expanding to more than five feet when it came at her again with teeth bared.

  Caitlin was going for her gun when Guillermo Paz swatted the bat out of the air with an arm that looked to her like a baseball bat. He whirled and swept another swooping trio aside, muzzle fire from Cort Wesley illuminating the darkness, which was broken only by the flashlight that Paz had managed to hold on to. His beam retraced their route through the cave, heading back to the main chamber and the night beyond.

  Afraid to stop moving, Caitlin heard light splashes as the downed bats dropped into the underground river, her eyes adjusting enough now for the luminescent glow off the cave walls to reveal the flight of the bats crisscrossing in the air. They were dive-bombing them, the bats’ collective squeals becoming deafening, all but drowning out the flutter of their wings, which made it seem as if the entire cave was vibrating.

  Back in the main chamber of the cave, Caitlin lent her fire to Cort Wesley’s, careful to keep her aim concentrated upward. Instead of spooking the bats, the assault seemed to further enrage them. They renewed their attack, reformed to concentrate from the cave mouth, as if to deny exit to their captives. She had happened upon bats before, but never any this big or violent. Bats were easily spooked, for sure, but they also were shy creatures that normally backed off after making their point.

  But this swarm showed no such inclination. The noxious odor she’d detected as soon as Paz had cracked open the secret chamber was clearly bat guano, but even that was different from what she recalled from past experiences. Sharper and more rancid. Maybe it had been creatures like these that had killed John D. Rockefeller’s gunman back in 1874 and had done the same to the work foreman just the other night. Or—