by Faith Hunter
“I got it.” Sheriff Toomey struck a match, lit the lantern, and held it out over the yawning cistern.
The darkness below was not impenetrable. The light glimmered across glossy black curves and winked against flat black ovals. A ribbon of yellow appeared, then twisted away in a dry rustling. I knew the sound now. Snakes. Dozens and dozens of garter snakes.
“I have to go down there.”
“No.” Toomey grabbed my arm “No, boy, you’ve done enough. There ain’t nothing to see down there. There wasn’t anything here for you see anyway. Let’s get you home.”
I shook him off. “I know that whatever is in that house, it’s getting stronger. It’s stretching out across the land. You want that thing to come into town? You want to see what it does to other families?”
He studied my face. “Do you think that could really happen?”
I didn’t laugh. I wasn’t a boy anymore, to laugh at a man who doesn’t want to see what’s right in front of him. “I am sure of it. Sure enough to go into a snake den just to make sure there’s nothing important at the bottom.”
He held the lantern for me as I climbed down the ladder. Rung by rung, I felt more certain of what I was doing. I felt the strong hand of my mind reaching out to the creatures at the bottom of the cistern. Ma could have charmed these snakes into doing anything she wanted, but me, I had to work at it. I had to push and nudge and urge those cold and sleepy reptiles.
I stood in the clear space I’d made at the bottom of the ladder and looked around myself. The snakes had mounded up around the edges of the cistern, trembling with unhappiness and the need to sleep. They watched me with little fierce eyes. I could smell them clearly now, their rank and musty hibernating scent. Beneath it was the scent of water gone thick with algae, too spoilt to drink.
But the plaster-lined cistern looked dry all over, the precious water sucked up by the hungry desert air. Whatever catchment system Kurt Schwartkopf had installed, he’d taken it down when he put in the well. I knelt on the smooth tank bottom and studied the space by the faint orange glow of the sheriff’s lantern.
It weren’t all smooth. A little heap lay to one side, only half-uncovered by the snakes, but that half was enough for me. It was easy to make out the shapes of two skulls, one big, one tiny, a set of long arm bones curled around the little skeleton. The lantern light flickered and danced across the yellowed bone, showing the cracks and the ugly hole drilled into the biggest skull. Beside the bones, a string of beads, blue glass and mother-of-pearl, winked in the light.
I stood up, my head spinning in the stink of the snakes, the understanding settling in my mind. Wind roared around me. I felt the power of the spirits swelling my chest. Everything went dark.
“Will!” Toomey screamed.
The walls above me pounded and throbbed. Something shrieked. The clean white lines of the tiny baby skeleton glowed bright as pure sunshine.
I saw the picture on the bear fur blanket: two horses and a colt.
Something began to wrap itself around my ankle. All around me, the air trembled with the sound of hissing. I fell to my knees, too dizzy to stand. My hand landed on something soft, too soft to be a snake.
Sheriff Toomey screamed again, a horrible, pained sound.
In my mind the words kept repeating themselves: blood will tell, blood will tell, blood will tell...
A snake buried its fangs into the flesh of my leg. I slapped it away, felt the hot blood dripping down my ankle. I put the soft thing in my pocket and clawed for the ladder.
“Sheriff Toomey!”
The ladder bucked and wriggled in my hands. The air beat against me, pounding and clawing at my skin. The blackness burned as it spun around me. For a moment, I couldn’t tell up from down.
“Will!”
Sheriff Toomey’s voice. I reached up for it. Something bit into my calf, hot burning fangs. And a sudden brightness flared up beneath my feet. I had to look down.
Something shimmered like the pale light of a candle flame in a window. It stretched and bloomed, took shape, the outline of a woman. The snakes pulled back around her. The baby wriggled in her arms, all crying mouth and dark eyes and hair as thick and black as an Indian baby.
Blood will tell.
Unwilling, I reached out to them with the strong hand of my mind. It’s all right, I said, firmly enough that it echoed in my head. It’s safe for you to come out now.
The spirit woman shook her head.
“Will!”
Blackness whooshed down the ladder and caught me in a blast of cold air. I slid for a second, caught myself, climbed faster.
I fell onto Sheriff Toomey as I scrabbled out of the hole. The wind pummeled me and pounded the walls. The air trembled with the groan of timbers pushed too far. Half of the roof lifted free, sending shingles tumbling down onto us. I grabbed Sheriff Toomey’s sleeve and staggered out of the remains of the shed.
The far wall of the shed shrieked as the wind ripped it off its foundation.
I could feel tears freezing on my face as I stumbled onto the gravel footpath and found I could not get up. Sheriff Toomey threw himself down beside me, and the wind, black and sooty, swept away the last boards of the old cistern building.
“I know you killed your daughter and her baby, Mr. Schwartzkopf!” I screamed it and I put will behind it. I couldn’t see the old man’s spirit in the black wind, but I knew it was there. “But now they’re free! Both of them! They’re free!”
The wind twisted upon itself, turning into a solid black cylinder whirling with broken boards and grit. It began to spin toward me.
I tried to reach out to it with my power. I tried to control it, tried to speak to it like I’d speak to any other spirit. But it bore down on me, thick and black and evil.
Then, deep inside the cyclone, lightning flashed. A bright white burning streak of it, the same shape as a deer’s antler. And something inside the whirlwind screamed in unspeakable agony.
Then there was silence.
The cyclone went still, the boards falling to the ground in a clamor. The sheriff and I sat there, our voices gone. It was a long time before we heard another sound. It was just the territory song of a sparrow, but it cleared the strangeness from the air.
I got to my feet, as stiff as an old man. Sheriff Toomey looked worse than I did. When we reached the windmill, we had to lean against the horses’ ordinary warmth and rest a moment before we could mount up. We didn’t talk as we rode.
A man met us before we reached town. I knew him a little as the father of a schoolmate and one of Sheriff Toomey’s deputies. He touched his hat when he saw the sheriff.
“Jake, I got some bad news. Paul Tucker’s dead.”
Sheriff Toomey’s lips thinned. “How the hell did that happen?”
“He unraveled the blanket in his cell. Used the yarn to strangle himself. Poor bastard.”
The sheriff passed his hand over his eyes. “I guess that’s that.”
“Yep.”
“I got to see this boy home, but I’ll be back at the office in about an hour. We’ll talk then, all right? Meantime, I imagine it wouldn’t hurt anything to let a few folks know.”
We rode all the way home in silence, the sheriff looking sick to his stomach. He stopped at our gate. We sat there, neither one ready to leave the other, neither one sure what to say.
Finally, he spat off to the side of the road. “All of that for nothing.”
“Not nothing, Sheriff. We fixed a place that was broken beyond the bounds of even the spirit world.”
He laughed, a short sharp sad bark. “What does that do for Paul Tucker?”
I thought of the bear fur, the beautiful bracelet, the tiny baby. The picture of the three horses sewn in those Nez Perce beads. I knew in my gut what Mr. Schwartzkopf had done to his daughter and grandbaby and the Indian man who had brought them that fur blanket, but just at moment, I was too tired to explain it all.
“I don’t know exactly, Mr. Toomey. But I think Lura
would have.” I took the soft bundle out of my coat pocket, and passed it to him.
He stared a long time at the skein of wool in his hand. It wasn’t pale yellow any more, more of a grubby gray than anything else, but he still rubbed it to his cheek, his eyes suddenly bright.
“You can call me Jake,” he said. “You’re man enough.”
I nodded, and leaned down to open the gate. I didn’t look back at him as I urged Fionn homeward. I could feel the welcoming presence of my friendly spirits.
Good job, a voice whispered, and though I couldn’t see her, I knew it was Deer Maiden.
The first snowflake fell as I rode toward the barn. It fluttered past me on a rustle of wind, the sagebrush rustling with the passage of Granddaddy Rattlesnake, seeking his kin.
Ruin Creek
Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin
“Are you sure about the telegram?” Agent Jacob Drangosavich set his carpetbag down on the platform of the empty train station. “You’re certain you read the time right?”
His partner, Mitch Storm, leveled a glare. “Yes, about the telegram. And yes, I can tell time.”
“Then there aren’t many other people taking the train to Ruin Creek, are there?” Jacob asked drolly. Their horses were stabled near the station, awaiting their return. A single gaslight burned at one end of the wooden platform. Even the ticket agents were gone by this late hour, and no other passengers were in sight.
“Not leaving from here, anyhow.” Mitch began to pace. With dark hair, a trim, muscular build and a five o’clock shadow that darkened at three, Mitch looked like every penny-dreadful writer’s epitome of an Army sharpshooter and secret government agent. Jacob was tall and raw-boned, with a long face and blue eyes that spoke to his Eastern European background. All things considered, a darkened train station in the middle of Arizona wasn’t the strangest place they’d been sent by the Department of Supernatural Investigations.
In the distance, a coyote howled. Moonlight cast the saguaro cactus in strange shadows. Overhead, the stars seemed bright as a lawman’s badge, and the darkened ridge of the Superstition Mountains loomed on the horizon.
“It’s just strange, having Headquarters send us out without notice,” Jacob remarked.
Mitch shrugged. “Not the first time; probably won’t be the last. Things come up, especially in our business. A fellow agent calls for assistance, we go.”
“If the telegram hadn’t had all the right codes, I’d worry we were being set up,” Jacob replied.
“You’re worrying about that anyhow.” Mitch knew his partner. “I triple-checked the codes.”
“I don’t like getting sent out at the last minute without more information,” Jacob groused.
Mitch rolled his eyes. “When has the Department ever worried about telling us everything we needed to know?”
Jacob grunted in grudging assent.
The mournful whistle of an oncoming train echoed across the empty desert landscape. A silver and black train ghosted to a stop at the platform and sent a puff of coal smoke into the air. It was a small train, just two passenger cars and two boxcars behind the engine and coal car. The passenger cars were brightly lit, but as far as Jacob could tell, they were empty.
“All aboard!” A man with a conductor’s uniform leaned out of the doorway to the first passenger car. Mitch grabbed his carpetbag and the long duffel that carried their weapons and hopped on before Jacob could utter a word, forcing him to catch up.
“Classy,” Mitch said as they entered the Pullman car. The seats were flocked green velvet and the cars were paneled with mahogany. Brass-shaded lanterns hung from the ceiling.
“Empty,” Jacob said, walking to the back of the car to check that no one was hiding on the floor between any of the empty seats. He peered through the glass in the door to the vestibule, looking into the second, equally deserted car. “I don’t like this.”
Mitch had already selected a seat with his back to the wall where he could watch the entire length of the car. Jacob reluctantly took a seat opposite him where he could see the other door. Mitch had a newspaper on his lap and beneath it, his Colt Peacemaker. He removed a silver flask from his pocket, took a swig, and offered it to Jacob, who shook his head. “Maybe when we get where we’re going in one piece,” Jacob replied.
The conductor entered from between the two passenger cars and walked toward them as if an empty train in the wee hours of the morning was the most natural thing in the world. “Tickets, please.”
Mitch held out the two tickets that had been delivered to their hotel within an hour of the unexpected telegram. The conductor barely glanced at the tickets, then nodded curtly.
“Do you make this run nightly?” Jacob asked.
“Make it when we need to make it,” the conductor replied as the engine started with a slight lurch. “Folks need to get to Ruin Creek, we stop here.”
“I know it’s late,” Jacob said in his friendliest tone, “but it’s pretty quiet. Where’d you come from?”
The conductor looked at Jacob as if the question didn’t register at first. “Down the line a ways,” he answered. “Far away. Long haul.”
“I’m just surprised that the cars are empty,” Jacob continued. “Seems like a lot of effort to run us out to Ruin Creek by ourselves. Isn’t there another train going that way in the morning?”
“Don’t know about that,” the conductor said, turning away. “I just do this route. Make yourselves comfortable. Won’t be long. No stops between here and there.” With that, he turned away and ambled down the empty car.
“Talkative fellow,” Mitch said.
“Have I mentioned that I don’t like this?” Jacob said. “There’s something fishy going on.” In response, Mitch closed his eyes and leaned back against the tufted seat cushions. “I’ll wake you up in two hours,” Jacob growled, settling in with his gun handy. “Then it’s my turn to sleep.”
Phoenix, Arizona, where they got on the train, was a wide-open outpost, not yet twenty years old. Anywhere they were headed was likely to be even rougher. Jacob had never heard of a town called Ruin Creek before the telegram, but the West was full of tiny railroad towns that sprang up and died within a year or two as the railroad workers and their camp followers moved on.
“You don’t think Ruin Creek is anywhere near Canyon Diablo, do you?” Jacob asked, ignoring the fact that Mitch was dozing off.
“Canyon Diablo is twelve miles northwest,” Mitch grunted, slouching further in his seat.
“I’m just saying, two government agents riding into a town like Canyon Diablo aren’t going to ride back out,” Jacob warned. “I heard that town went through eight lawmen in six months. Nothing but saloons and houses of ill repute.”
“Sounds like my kind of town,” Mitch said, turning away from Jacob.
“We didn’t bring enough ammunition to go into a town like that,” Jacob continued.
“Speak for yourself.”
With a sigh, Jacob settled in for his time on watch. The train was moving fast, streaking through the night as the wheels made a click-clack rhythm. Jacob’s Remington revolver was where he could draw it quickly and so was a Bowie knife. A shotgun, Mitch’s rifle, and an assortment of other weapons were in the duffel bag overhead.
The train pulled into Ruin Creek at nine. “Last stop,” the conductor said, reappearing just before the train slowed. Jacob peered out of the window. What he could see was unimpressive. The station was just a small shed and an awning over a wooden platform.
“Funny. There’s no one here to meet us,” Mitch muttered as they walked across the platform. Behind them, the train whistle sounded and then the locomotive pulled away from the station.
“There’s a note,” Jacob said, pointing to an envelope pinned up on the board where schedule updates usually were posted. ‘Department of Supernatural Investigation’, the envelope read. Jacob took it down and unfolded a single sheet of paper.
“Sorry I couldn’t be here for your arrival,” he r
ead aloud. “Cline’s Rooming House is expecting you. Leave your bags in the parlor. I’ll meet you there and will explain more then. Many thanks. The letter’s signed, ‘Ahiga Sani’.”
“That’s a Navajo name,” Mitch observed.
Jacob nodded. “The town is technically on Navajo land. The brass had to clear it through a couple of other offices to keep from getting sideways with the tribe before they sent us.”
“That, and the fact that the last agent they sent out here disappeared.” Eli Bly, the agent who had sent a telegram asking for back up at Ruin Creek, had not been heard from since that brief, urgent message.
“If it were easy, they wouldn’t pay us big salaries to figure out what’s going on,” Jacob said.
Mitch looked askance at him. “They don’t pay us big salaries, but we’re still the ones who get shot at.” He checked his watch. “Almost nine-thirty now. We’d better get going,” he added and hefted the duffle bag onto one shoulder, lifting his carpetbag with the other hand.
“We can drop off our carpetbags at the rooming house, but I’ll keep this one with us.”
While their carpetbags held only clothing, it wouldn’t do to have someone poking around the duffle. Not only had Mitch loaded it with weapons, but it contained experimental—and useful—scientific gear from a genius inventor at Tesla Westinghouse in New Pittsburgh. Some of the equipment was sanctioned by the Department. Other pieces were custom-made, off-the-books items that Mitch maintained were need-to-know only. And the Department, in Mitch’s opinion, did not need to know.
Ruin Creek had one main street. Hastily erected wooden buildings lined both sides of the thoroughfare, with sidewalks made of rough-hewn planks. Half a dozen saloons, three bordellos, four rooming houses, a dance hall, and a dry goods store sustained the hard-working railroaders and those who had come West to help them spend their money. Behind the main street sat a blacksmith’s forge, a stable, and a few dozen houses that were more like shanties.
“Looks like the townsfolk know how to have fun,” Mitch observed drily. Faces peered from the windows as they walked the length of the main street. Jacob felt like he and Mitch were being paraded for the town to see, and his hand never strayed far from his gun. The hair on the back of his neck rose, though nothing presented a clear threat. The town was eerily silent except for the rustling of the wind.