Rook & Tooth and Claw

by Graham Masterton

  John Three Names shook his head. “You wouldn’t want to try that, Jim.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s more human than you think. Come on, John, how can this be real? A demon who lives for ever by mating with human women?”

  John Three Names laid a hand on his shoulder. “How about a drink? I’ll bet you could use one, after that journey.”

  The bar was deserted except for three iron-haired Navajos in ponytails and business suits talking about industrial leases in Tuba City. Jim ordered a beer and John Three Names asked for a Bloody Mary (“I didn’t have time for lunch, and this is as good as.”) In the background, Nat King Cole sang Ramblin’ Rose.

  John Three Names guided Jim over to a table by the window. “I like to see what’s coming and what’s going, especially at times like these.” He parted the venetian blinds with two fingers and peered out into the glaring street.

  “In the original Navajo legend,” he said, “Coyote lusted after a very beautiful girl. She had two brothers who tried to protect her. The girl was strong-willed as well as beautiful, and Coyote struggled for months to seduce her, to take over her soul. She hated him at first, and put him through all kinds of tests – literally making him die for her. But each time he died, he buried a flint next to his body so that he could dig himself up again. In the end, he was so persistent that she couldn’t resist him any longer, and she allowed him past the hem of her skirt.

  “Under Coyote’s influence, she became a creature which we call the Changing Bear Maiden, joining Coyote in all of his evil-doing. The stories say that she took a particular pleasure out of snapping men’s necks with her jaws, and ripping their chests open with her claws.”

  “She had only one vulnerability – she couldn’t change into a bear when anybody was watching her, so her family protected her by making sure that they kept a guard on her day and night.”

  “Sounds familiar,” said Jim.

  “It’s a legend. How much of it you care to believe – well, that’s entirely up to you.”

  “What’s your part in all this?” Jim asked him.

  “I’m an interested party, that’s all – apart from being a friend of Henry Black Eagle. I work as a freelance for the Navajo newspaper Diné Baa-Hané. A demon hunter by night and a mild-mannered reporter by day.”

  At that moment, Susan came into the bar, followed by Catherine and Sharon and Mark. “I thought I’d find you two in here,” said Susan. “I could murder a Bloody Mary.”

  Jim moved around so that Susan could sit next to him. Catherine sat opposite, and gave him an odd, worried look, as if she had something on her mind but didn’t quite know how to start talking about it.

  “What happens next?” asked Susan.

  “We’ll go up to the Meadow Between Rocks at first light tomorrow,” said John Three Names. “We’re lucky. They’re holding a first laugh rite there for one of my nephews. That’s something you don’t get to see very often.”

  “A first laugh rite?”

  “When a child first laughs, around its fortieth day, he joins the human race, and he will make a covenant with the laughter gods which will be sealed with salt. There will be prayers and a big celebration. Meanwhile I suggest you all get some rest. You haven’t had an easy journey, and there will be much more difficult times ahead of us.”

  “I’m going out to catch some rays,” said Mark.

  “Don’t burn,” Susan told him.

  Catherine stayed where she was. John Three Names asked her if she wanted a Coke, but she shook her head. “Something’s happening to me,” she said. “Something’s happening to me and I don’t know what it is.”

  “Go on,” said Jim.

  “It’s just that I keep having these nightmares, only they’re not nightmares. They happen during the day.”

  “What kind of nightmares?”

  “They’re just like a flash in my head. Flash, and they’re gone. But since we’ve come here to Window Rock I’ve had three or four of them already.”

  “Are they all the same?”

  “I keep imagining that I’m running very fast. Not running away from anything. I’m not frightened. In fact it’s the opposite – I’m chasing something, or somebody. I want to jump on them and attack them. I want to hear them screaming. I’m strong. I can’t believe how strong I am. I could tear somebody’s arm off just like that.

  Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes. “You just talked about a child laughing and joining the human race. I don’t know, I have such a terrible feeling. I feel like I’m leaving it.”

  Chapter Six

  During the night, Jim was woken up by the sound of his own heart beating. He placed his hand over his chest, but then he realised that it wasn’t his heart beating at all – it was drumming. He sat up in bed and he could hear it quite distinctly – a slow, persistent throb-THROB-THROB-throb, throb-THROB-THROB-throb. He listened for a while, frowning into the darkness. Jesus, it sounded like Drums Along The Mohawk. He swung his legs out of bed and walked to the patio window, pulling up his newly-bought pajama pants. He slid the window back and stepped out barefoot onto the tiled floor, which was still warm from yesterday’s sunshine.

  In the near distance he could see a fire glowing, its sparks whirling into the darkness. Up above him, the whole sky was crowded with stars. He hadn’t seen stars like this since he was a boy, and his father had taken him fishing off the coast of Santa Barbara. He felt a strange emotional surge – a mixture of nostalgia for days gone by, and regret that he never saw the stars any longer, not like this.

  He climbed over the railing that surrounded his patio and dropped heavily down onto the dusty, prickly ground. He heard something scurry in the darkness, and a lizard flickered over his foot. He was beginning to regret that he hadn’t put on his sneakers. There were rattlesnakes here, too, and scorpions.

  But the drumming went on, resonant and repetitive. Throb-THROB-THROB-throb, echoing and flat. Jim looked around. He was amazed that it hadn’t woken anybody else – but then again, maybe it had, and they had recognised it for what it was, and ignored it. He hesitated for almost a whole minute, wondering whether he ought to go back to bed and forget about it. But then he saw a dark figure rise from the ground, just in front of the fire, and begin to sway from side to side. It looked as if the figure was wearing an odd, bulky headdress, with horns or ears, and dangling necklaces.

  What was more, on the far side of the fire, Jim was sure that he could make out a black, bulky shape. It didn’t seem to be illuminated by the flames: it was more like a shadow, except that it couldn’t be a shadow, because there was nothing to cast it. He saw two red sparks that might have been sparks, or might have been blood-red eyes. A cool wind blew against his bare back and brought goosebumps all the way up to his hairline. There was something there, he was sure of it. Something cold. Something old. Something bristling.

  He made his way cautiously toward the fire, trying to step over rocks and dried-up weed and prickly vegetation. He could see now that it was the figure with the headdress that was beating the drum. It was a naked man, his body shining with sweat. He was grasping a tall decorated drum between his thighs and banging it with the edge of his hands. The fire had burned low now: it was nothing much more than a heap of glowing ashes, but it gave off so much heat that the air above it was rippling and distorted. Jim stopped, and shaded his eyes with both hands, but it was impossible for him to tell if the shadow was really there, or whether it was nothing more than a mirage produced by the heat. All the time the drum kept beating throb-THROB-THROB-throb, and now Jim could hear the man chanting, too, although he couldn’t understand any of the words.

  He thought: this isn’t getting me anyplace at all. This is probably some kind of Navajo ceremony. Paying homage to the night sky. Thanking the moon for coming up and going down again. Who knew? He felt embarrassed because he was intruding; and he felt slightly paranoid because he kept looking at every slow-dancing shadow around the fire and imagining that it was more than jus
t a shadow. It was the Changing Bear Maiden, with her claws and her teeth, ready to snap men’s necks.

  He turned back toward the Inn, but as he did so, he saw Sharon rush out onto his patio. “Mr Rook!” she called out, and she was obviously distressed. “Mr Rook? Where are you?”

  The man standing by the fire turned around, his pelts and necklaces swinging. Abruptly, the drumming stopped. Jim called out, “Here, Sharon! I’m just over here!”

  “It’s Catherine, Mr Rook! She’s gone missing!”

  Jim glanced toward the fire. The man in the headdress was still staring in his direction, his drum stilled. The heat from the fire was deflected by the wind, and for one split-second Jim was sure that he saw a huge, sloping-shouldered figure, as black as the sky between the stars – just like a bear only three times larger. But then the wind blew up a cloud of smoke and ashes, and the figure vanished.

  Jim walked back to the patio, his feet bruised and scratched. Sharon was wearing a voluminous pink T-shirt with a picture of the Care Bears on it. Her hair was thicketed with pink plastic rollers. “I woke up to go to the bathroom, Mr Rook, and Catherine was gone! She was only wearing a nightshirt and she didn’t take no clothes with her. I was looking for her along the corridor when I heard that drumming and I was frightened.”

  “It’s OK,” said Jim. Behind him, the drummer was still silent, and the fire was beginning to die down. “I don’t know what’s going on, but the best thing you can do is get yourself back to bed. Catherine’s been pretty disturbed since she came back here. Maybe she’s gone for a walk to think things over.”

  Sharon nodded toward the fire, and the silhouetted man with the drum. “What is that, Mr Rook? What’s going on here? Is that guy wearing any clothes?”

  “Erm, no. It doesn’t look as if he is. But, you know, this isn’t Santa Monica. I guess they do things a little differently here.”

  “And where were you going?” Sharon frowned. “You’re not even wearing any shoes.”

  “I was … well, I guess I was going to investigate.”

  Sharon gave him a narrow-eyed look. “There’s something weird about this trip, Mr Rook? I mean, this isn’t like your usual college cultural trip. So far I’ve been scared out of my brain in an airplane and now it’s all drums and fires and people shouting in the middle of the night, and nobody’s even mentioned anything cultural.”

  “Oh, it’s cultural, all right,” Jim told her. “I’m just worried that it may be a little too cultural.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” said Jim, “the truth is, we’re not really here on a field trip. We’re here mostly for Catherine’s sake. When she was fifteen she was promised in marriage to a Navajo guy called Dog Brother, but now she doesn’t want to marry him. I came to Window Rock to see if there’s any way to break their engagement. I needed you guys along to keep her company.”

  Sharon stared at him, distinctly unimpressed. “This Dog Breath, he still wants to marry her?”

  “Brother, not Breath. But yes, so far as I know, he still wants to marry her.”

  “But why did she have to come back at all? Why not write him a ‘Dear Dog Breath’ letter, and forget about it? And why did you have to come? Couldn’t her father have brought her?”

  “I had to come because of Martin, and what happened in the locker room. I had to come because my home was wrecked and my cat was killed.”

  “Hunh? I don’t get it.”

  “Sharon, this Dog Brother is a very jealous guy, by all accounts, and he’s worked some kind of spell on Catherine. If any guy gets too close to her, Dog Brother makes sure that he suffers. Anything that means anything to him gets destroyed. In Martin’s case – well, he was destroyed, too.”

  “I thought Catherine’s brothers did all that. They’re in jail for it, aren’t they?”

  “There’s some circumstantial evidence that suggests they might have killed Martin, for sure. But for all of the vandalism and killing my cat they have pretty unshakeable alibis. They claim that everything was done by some kind of a force – a force which Dog Brother conjured up when Catherine ran off to LA. It’s all to do with Native American magic. I don’t even understand it myself. But it looks like the only way to face up to this force is to come here and talk to this Dog Brother face to face.”

  “When you say ‘force,’ do you mean like that voodoo guy you had to hunt down?”

  “I guess something like that. It’s invisible. Nobody else can see it except me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us before we came out here? Don’t you trust us?”

  “Of course I trust you. That’s the whole reason I wanted you to come. It’s just that I didn’t know what I was dealing with. The logical explanation is that Catherine’s brothers were responsible. But I’ve been seeing things and feeling feelings that make me think that maybe they’re telling the truth. Or part of the truth, anyhow.”

  “What feelings? What things?”

  “Nothing specific … shadows where shadows shouldn’t be. A kind of tension in the air. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

  “Well, next time you see something like that, maybe you’d like to let the rest of us know.”

  “Sure, I promise,” said Jim, trying to be reassuring. “Now, we can talk about this later. Why don’t you go back to your room and wait to see if Catherine comes back. I’ll go take a look around the grounds and see if I can find her. I doubt she’s gone far.”

  “Just remember – trust,” said Sharon. Jim gave her a high five and she went back to her bedroom.

  Jim started to walk cautiously back toward the fire. He hadn’t gone far, however, when he heard Susan’s voice calling, off to the right. “Catherine! Sharon! Where are you?”

  “Oh, God, that’s all I need,” said Jim. “Susan! Sharon’s fine! She’s gone back to her room! I’m just looking for Catherine!”

  He couldn’t see Susan at first, but then she appeared out of the smoke, halfway between the Inn and the fire. She was wrapped in a light white towelling robe, and she was carrying a flashlight. “Jim?” she said. “Is that you? I’ve been looking for Catherine and Sharon! Their beds are empty!”

  “For Christ’s sake, Susan—” Jim began, but he was interrupted by the sharp bang of a hand on a drum. The fire had almost completely died down now, so it was difficult to see the man’s figure, except for his dangling headdress and the curve of his glistening chest. But then he banged his drum again, quicker and harder, until he was beating out a fast, insanely complicated rhythm and his hands were a blur. Susan, confused, stopped where she was for a moment. “Jim?” she called out. “Do you have Sharon with you? Where’s Catherine?”

  She was still more than a hundred feet away. And it was then that Jim saw the black shadow detach itself from the other side of the fire and come rushing toward her, quite silently, with no other trace of its passing than a light whirl of dust and a few small clattering rocks. Susan was standing quite still now, obliviously waving. Yet the darkness was approaching her with all the speed of a charging bull. Weirdly, though, it was totally silent.

  “Susan!” Jim shouted. “Susan – watch out!”

  He sprinted toward her as fast as he could. He hadn’t run like this since he was at high school, when he had almost won the 200m against the school’s best athlete, Eddie LaFrance. He could see Eddie’s grinning, self-satisfied face even now. Jim had burst his heart trying to win that race and he hadn’t been able to believe it when he came second. He had done the unforgivable, and started to cry.

  That was why he was running so furiously now. He couldn’t fail a second time.

  “Susan!” he gasped. “Susan, watch out! On your right, Susan! It’s there, on your right-hand side!”

  Susan stopped, perplexed. She looked to her right but it was obvious that she couldn’t see anything at all. “Just believe me!” Jim screamed at her. “Just get down!”

  The beast was big – much bigger than Jim had imagined. Its shoulders were hunched, its c
laws were lifted in terrifying curves, already tinged red by the fire. But its speed frightened Jim the most. He was running so fast toward Susan that he was almost flying. His feet skipped from rock to rock and he leaped over bushes like a hurdler. Yet the huge black shadowy thing was bearing down on Susan and he knew that it was going to be touch-and-go to stop it.

  The worst thing was that only he could see it. Susan stayed where she was, turning around and around, looking for something which was totally invisible.

  Jim reached Susan and flung himself at her in a football-tackle. Astonished, frightened, she stepped back, and he hit the ground with a bruising impact and rolled over into a thicket of thorns. He twisted his head around in time to see the beast almost on top of her, its fur bristling, its eyes smouldering like coke-cinders. Jim could smell it: the cold, old bear smell – rank with blood and urine and decaying pelts. He could smell it and he could see it, yet Susan was standing right beneath it, her hands perched on her hips, saying, “Jim – for God’s sake – do you mind telling me what’s!—”

  Jim screamed, “Get down!” at her, but she was still looking at him in annoyance when a huge claw swept right under her chin and knocked her head right off her body, skying it right up into the night, right up against the stars, with blood spraying behind it like a comet’s tail.

  For a moment, her body remained where it was, still standing, headless, with her carotid artery pumping out geysers of blood. Her towelling robe turned from white to crimson right in front of Jim’s eyes. Then the beast dug its claws into her again, and literally tore her apart – ribcage, pelvis, arms and legs. The crackling of bones was so loud that Jim pressed his hands over his ears, and closed his eyes. He opened them again to see what was left of her collapsing onto the dirt, like a broken bird’s nest, rags and sticks and branches.

  He looked up at the beast. For a moment, he thought that it was going to strike him down, too. It stood over him for a moment, blotting out the night sky. Jim lowered his head and closed his eyes and he was sick to his stomach. But then he heard the drums start up again – throb-THROB-THROB-throb – throb-THROB-THROB-throb. He looked up, and saw the beast turn its head. Then its outline appeared to waver, and soften, and one by one he saw the stars begin to shine through its bristling fur. The drum persisted – throb – THROB – THROB – throb – and the beast began to move away, or perhaps to melt away, disappearing into the darkness in the direction of the fire.