by Faith Hunter
“If it’s like the other railroad towns we’ve been in, they’re a long way from home doing a hard job, and they take their comfort where they can,” Jacob replied.
Cline’s Rooming House was a two-story clapboard home at the end of Main Street. Its weathered siding did not look as if it had ever been painted, and dust clouded the windows and covered the front porch. Mitch and Jacob climbed the stairs and gave a knock at the door. No one answered.
They looked at each other and shrugged. Just in case, Jacob drew his gun, but he kept it down at his side as Mitch pushed the door open.
The rooming house kitchen was unremarkable. A battered farmhouse table and chairs were in the center of the room, while a Hoosier cupboard sat along one wall and a cast-iron stove hunkered against the back wall.
“Looks like no one’s home, so I guess we’ll figure out where our room is later,” Mitch said, as Jacob nosed into the parlor and found it empty. “Let’s drop off the bags and find someone who can tell us why we’re here.”
When they headed out a few moments later, a lone man stood on the porch, waiting for them. He had sharp features and tawny skin, and he wore a loose chambray shirt over worn denim pants and scuffed boots, along with a black reservation hat with a woven hat band. The stranger held up his hands. “I mean you no harm.” He paused. “Are you from the Department? Thank you for coming.”
Mitch wore the same expression he used for poker, flinty-eyed and unreadable. “Maybe. Who are you?”
“My name is Ahiga Sani. This is Navajo land, and I’m the local shaman. I came to greet you, and help you understand your task.”
Mitch stepped forward to shake his hand. “Agent Mitch Storm, and this is my partner Jacob Drangosavich,” he said, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Jacob noticed that before Mitch shook hands with the stranger, his left hand closed around a charm on his watch fob. It was a gift from an absinthe witch, a way to tell if the person being touched had magic. His expression gave nothing away, but Jacob knew his partner well enough to notice a slight flinch. There’s magic afoot, Jacob thought. But why?
“What seems to be the trouble?” Jacob asked. “Contacting the Department means you’re requesting a very specific type of help. We’re not exactly the Texas Rangers.”
“No, you’re not,” Sani replied. “Ruin Creek has a peculiar kind of trouble, and that requires a particular kind of help.”
“We were invited by a man named Eli Bly,” Mitch replied. “Have you seen him?”
Sani nodded. “I met Mr. Bly. But he is gone now. As for the reason for the telegram, you are correct about there being ‘problems’. Strange airships have flown overhead. A silver ship crashed near here. Pieces of it scattered across the desert. They call to the chindi, the bad ghosts. They brought a skinwalker and an outlaw. Bly’s message for you was to find the pieces, set the ghosts to rest, and release the spirits.”
“Who’s the outlaw?” Jacob probed. “And if an airship crashed, what do the pieces have to do with ghosts and monsters? Why would it cause problems for the town?”
“Some things aren’t meant to be here,” Sani said. “They give off bad energy. Strange power.”
“Do you know where the pieces are?” Mitch asked. “Can you lead us to them?”
Sani shook his head. “No. Their power wars with my magic. But the railroad people disturbed the site after the crash, brought things to the surface that should have stayed asleep. No one can rest until it’s put right.”
That explains why Mitch reacted the way he did. Jacob thought. “So you think the pieces that caused the problem are near where the railroad construction was?” Jacob eyed the stranger warily. Something about the man made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.
“It wasn’t a regular airship, was it?” Mitch asked.
Sani shook his head. “It was not meant to be here. What it left behind doesn’t belong. Things won’t be right until it’s gone. You have to find it.”
“We’re not going to have any problems with the tribe, are we?” Mitch asked. “Because top people signed off on our clearance.”
“The tribe is not the problem.” Sani led them to where they could see the horizon west of town. “See that rise?” he asked, pointing. “Just over it is a valley. About six months ago, people started seeing strange lights in the sky from over that way. Bright lights that weren’t stars, moving too fast to be anything natural. Odd noises, too. Scared off the animals—even the coyotes, and they don’t scare easily,” he said with a chuckle.
“Then folks saw airships in the sky, day and night, but they didn’t look like regular airships,” he said. “Too many lights on them, and too much metal.”
“Maybe the Army is trying out new equipment,” Mitch suggested.
“The Army denied ownership, remember?” Jacob said recalling one of the few pieces of information they were given. Typical, Jacob thought. Try out a bunch of newfangled inventions, scare the locals half to death, and pretend it never happened.
“There was a crash. Some people from the town disappeared,” Sani continued. “Cattle died. Chickens quit laying eggs. Dogs barked at nothing.”
Mitch and Jacob exchanged a look. Now we’re getting somewhere, Jacob thought. Strange airships and weird occurrences are right up our alley.
“What about the railroad?” Jacob asked. “That’s why the town is here. How much longer will the work last?” He looked around at the deserted streets. “And where is everyone?”
Sani shrugged. “They finished the bridge the townsfolk were here to build about six months ago, right after the crash. The work’s dried up, and Ruin Creek dried up with it. But there were a few still doing clean up, moving the last of the supplies. The ones that didn’t leave town after the crash, the skinwalker took. All that’s left now are the dead, buried out yonder by that big tree,” he said with a nod of his head. “But they don’t rest easy.”
“You never said how you knew about the Department.” Mitch said it casually, but Jacob picked up on the caution in his partner’s tone. “After all, we’re not common knowledge.”
“Eli Bly told me to expect you.” Sani said. “Then he left.”
“Where did he go?” Mitch asked.
Sani shrugged. “Don’t know. But he wasn’t the only stranger poking around. There’s been another man looking around the ridge. Bly said he was an outlaw. He took a shot at me, when I got too close. The spirits don’t like him, either.”
“What did he look like?” Jacob raised an eyebrow, as a suspicion grew.
“Tall man, thin like a scarecrow. Sharp nose. Hair like straw. Shot his gun left-handed,” Sani replied.
Mitch and Jacob exchanged a glance. “Peter Kasby?” Mitch said with a sigh. “He’s trouble, all right.”
“From what you’ve said, it makes sense he’d show up here,” Jacob added. “Everyone calls him ‘The Prospector’ because he goes out to sites where there are problems and sees what he can steal.”
“He’s a dangerous man,” Sani agreed. “Be careful. He may still be around.”
“We’ve tangled with Kasby before,” Mitch replied. “But thanks for the warning. Now, we need some horses and supplies if we’re going to have a look over that ridge.”
“You’ll find your horses in the stable, ready to go, saddlebags packed with all the equipment you should need,” Sani said. “Best you be back here by nightfall. There are worse things than coyotes in the dark. You’ll find food in the cupboard for your meals and some to take with you when you ride out to look beyond the ridge. There’s a well in the back to fill your canteens, and a few bottles of whiskey in the dry sink cabinet. You’re the only guests at the rooming house.”
“Sounds like you’ve taken care of everything,” Mitch said. “So we’ll get to work.” He glanced at Sani. “Are you coming out to the ridge with us?”
Sani shook his head. “My magic will not permit me to enter the crater. The power of what the silver ship left behind wars with my abilities.” He drop
ped his voice. “I speak with the dead. The spirit of the captain of the silver ship came to me. He told me to find the metal boxes and turn them off so he and his people can finally rest.”
“Metal boxes?” Jacob asked. “Equipment?”
Sani sighed. “I am a shaman. I speak with spirits. But sometimes, the spirits can’t say plainly what they need. This spirit shared an image with me, of two metal boxes and a silvery oval. I assume they were the equipment he meant. I gathered they were damaged in the crash, and something about those boxes is raising hell. It got worse when someone started digging, bringing them closer to the surface. The sooner you can shut them down, the better.” Sani gave them a tip of his hat in farewell and strode off down the street. Mitch and Jacob turned and walked toward the stable
“You believe him?” Jacob asked under his breath.
“Not completely,” Mitch replied. “There’s something weird about this place—but that’s the point, I guess. The sooner we find out what it is and how to put it right, the faster we can get back to New Pittsburgh or somewhere else that’s civilized.”
“You think Bly just told him about the Department—and us?”
Mitch shrugged. “Maybe. We don’t know how well he knew Sani, and what called him away. And the Department didn’t bother to tell us. Typical.”
“So is Bly really missing? Or just reassigned?”
“Maybe when we get to the bottom of this, we’ll know,” Mitch replied.
They found the horses saddled and tied up to the hitching post by the stable. Mitch and Jacob checked the saddlebags and found food, water, and survival equipment: a pickaxe and shovel, compass, tarpaulin, and a few other essentials. Mitch secured the duffel bag and the two men rode out toward the ridge.
“Ruin Creek isn’t the first place to report strange airships,” Jacob observed.
“Been a lot of reports this year,” Mitch agreed. “Always in some godforsaken corner of the desert where the people who might see something aren’t likely to be taken seriously.”
“Do you think Sani is telling the truth about Bly?” Jacob asked.
“Don’t know what I think about that,” Mitch replied. “Bly sent a request for backup. So where is he?”
“The West is a big place,” Jacob said. “He could have gotten reassigned by one of the other managers. You know they don’t talk to each other. We drew the short straw because we were handy. For all we know, Bly’s up in the Yukon, looking for sasquatch.”
“Are those hairy guys causing problems again? I thought we told them to keep it quiet and stay in the woods.” They rode in silence for a while. Jacob kept looking over his shoulder, sure they were being watched, but he saw no one. Still, he made certain his duster was out of the way of his holster, in case he needed a fast draw.
“Well, will you look at that?” Mitch murmured as they reached the crest of the rise. Below them spread a wide crater with deep, sloping walls. “Holy Hell.”
Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Whatever made a hole like that when it hit had to be big.”
The desert stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. They slipped and slid their way to the bottom of the basin. “Yeah, they were looking for something,” Jacob observed. Dozens of holes pockmarked the bottom of the depression. They had clearly been shoveled out and the work looked recent.
“Sani’s story doesn’t explain why people disappeared or why there were problems with the livestock,” Jacob replied.
“Could be coincidence. Something strange happens, and people blame everything that happens afterward on it, whether the two are related or not,” Mitch said with a shrug. “Or maybe they got hit with the ship when it fell. Doesn’t take much to set dogs to barking, and chickens go off laying for all kinds of reasons.” He pulled out a black box with a silver metal probe connected by a cord and cranked it up, watching the dials and gauges as he swept the probe in an arc around him.
“I’m getting some very strange data,” Mitch said. “The EMF readings are pegging the dials.”
“Okay,” Jacob replied, drawing out the syllables. “That could mean about a dozen or more things.”
“Despite what I picked up from Sani, I don’t think we’re dealing with magic out here.” Mitch tucked the meter away and drew out the charm he had been given by the absinthe witch. He held it by a thin silver chain, and to Jacob’s eye, the charm did absolutely nothing. “See? It’s not glowing or spinning.”
“There’s magic, and then there’s the supernatural,” Jacob said. “People call those hills the ‘Superstition’ Mountains, for a reason. We’re on Navajo land. Maybe Renate’s charm doesn’t pick up on Navajo juju.”
Mitch scowled at him and shoved the charm back in his pocket. “There’s a new toy Farber built for me—a mineral detector. It’s the funny-looking thing in the duffle bag that’s not a gun. How about taking a look around with it?”
“What are you going to do?”
Mitch grinned. “Fiddle with the Maxwell box.”
Jacob had plenty of experience with Adam Farber’s experimental gadgets. The young man was a certifiable genius who impressed even Nikola Tesla with his designs. But often, the first-of-their-kind pieces of equipment Farber built for the Department caused unintended consequences. Jacob had learned to be cautious.
Jacob pulled out a metal contraption that looked like a pole with a few loops of steel tubing at the bottom, and plenty of wires and gauges along the sides. Powered by a Gassner battery, and embellished by Farber, the detector began beeping loudly as soon as Jacob turned it on.
“There’s iron scattered all over this lake bed,” Jacob said. “Lots of it. Some nickel, too.”
Mitch kicked at the ground, then bent down to pick up a handful of blue-white crystals. “Bring that thing over here, will you?” Jacob rolled his eyes but complied.
Mitch flipped a switch on the detector, then ran the crystals beneath the scanner. “Look at this,” he said. “Really strange quartz—not like anything I’ve ever seen before. Even the scanner is saying there’s got to be an error.”
“Maybe the airship crash did something to the rock, especially if there was a lot of heat,” Jacob said.
“Maybe.” Mitch pulled out a black box with knobs and gauges. “Let’s see what kind of ghosts we can call up.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t,” Jacob replied. “We don’t have the usual protections.”
Mitch made a dismissive gesture. “I’m not going to turn it on full blast. Let’s start with the simple stuff.”
“Only you would consider ghosts to be ‘simple’.”
Mitch glared at him. “All right. Just in case, grab one of the Ketchum grenades in the bag. And there’s an icon in that red box from Father Matija.”
Jacob grumbled under his breath, but he retrieved the items. Mitch turned the knob on the Maxwell box. They didn’t have long to wait.
“Look!” Jacob said, pointing to the ridge. Light shimmered like heat waves coming off the desert all along the lip of the depression. In those shimmering waves, Jacob made out the faces and forms of people, though they were distorted by something that pulled them this way and that, like a column of smoke in a breeze.
“Something’s interfering with the Maxwell box,” Mitch said. “Something strong enough to repel the ghosts even though I’ve got the power turned up.” He glanced at the gauges. “We’re pegging the meter. Plenty of ghosts to go around, but for some reason, they can’t pass the crest of the ridge.”
“Let them go,” Jacob urged. “Bad enough that they’re dead. Now we know—this place has the spirits all stirred up, but they don’t want to come into the basin.”
Mitch nodded and turned down the knob on the Maxwell box. The shimmering line of ghosts winked out. “They’re gone,” he said, looking up at the now-deserted ridge.
“I still feel like we’re being watched,” Jacob replied. “You believe Sani about chindi and the skinwalker?” he asked as he replaced the grenade in the duffel bag and drew his
revolver. The heavy, cold steel was a comfortable certitude.
“I believe that he believes in them,” Mitch replied with a shrug. “But I’m intrigued about these ‘missing pieces’ and I really want to know why Kasby—if he’s the one—is hanging around.”
“Maybe someone else has a wunderkind like Farber coming up with secret inventions,” Jacob said. “Only one of theirs didn’t work so well. And maybe their ‘silver bird’ had other off-the-books gadgets onboard that got damaged in the crash and are going haywire.” He shrugged. “Imagine an airship crashing with a Maxwell box onboard and having it get stuck turned on full blast.”
Mitch repressed a shiver. “I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”
“What now?” Jacob asked.
“We go looking for the pieces that Mr. Sani told us got dug up in the railroad construction. Find them, and we’re closer to fixing the problem.”
~*~
“There’s a lot of nothing out here.” Jacob kicked a rock and sent it tumbling through the dust. It was still mid-morning, cool by desert standards. Saguaro and mesquite stretched as far as the eye could see. “And so far, we’ve seen more rattlesnakes than pieces of strange airships.”
“I think Sani was right,” Mitch replied, ignoring his comments. “Somebody crashed an experimental ship with gear onboard. Either they couldn’t find the missing pieces or no one filed the right paperwork for a recovery team, so it’s still here, causing issues.”
“You think it’s one of ours?” Jacob asked, raising an eyebrow.
“We’re pretty far south for it to be the Canadians,” Mitch replied, walking a parallel course to the railroad tracks, running the metal detector back and forth. He frowned as the detector beeped, but all he found was the button from a man’s jacket. He straightened and looked at the button in the light.