by Jim Beard
Stepping inside the shack, they closed the door behind them and looked out over the immense object.
“Match?” Cabot suggested.
“No, I wouldn’t if I were you,” the lieutenant said, stepping closer to the giant rock. “Vapors, remember? Wellington won’t care for it if we blow ourselves up.”
They allowed their eyes to further adjust to the darkness. Valiantine stood and peered at the object while Cabot made a slow orbit around it.
“Whatever the gas or vapor is, it’s definitely coming from the rock itself.”
The lieutenant grunted his agreement with Cabot’s assessment, and crouched down to get a closer look. Reaching out with one hand, he moved in slowly to touch the craggy surface.
“Be careful!” Cabot hissed, his eyes widening over his handkerchief.
“Yes, Mother.”
Upon closer inspection, Valiantine could see the wisps of vapor floating up from the rock’s exterior, and hanging mere inches in the air above it. It might have been a trick of the dark, but he swore the wisps radiated a barely imperceptible illumination.
His fingers came into contact with the object and found its surface to be cold and clammy.
“Hmm, did you say something?” he asked Cabot. The man did not reply.
Valiantine looked up from his scrutiny of the rock and discovered he was quite alone in the shack.
Light sifted in through the cracks between the boards, as if someone outside the shack walked past it with a lantern or torch. Whoever it was, he made no sound.
The floor began to tilt. Valiantine had a wild thought that the presumed meteorite might tumble out of its hole and break apart against the wall.
The light from outside illuminated the vapors inside. Suddenly, they seemed to be more heavily present. Suddenly light-headed, he wondered if it might not be nitrous oxide, but the idea slipped away as swiftly as it had come to him.
He tried to call out for Cabot, but his tongue felt thick and furred. He could not speak.
With a gasp of realization, he felt no ground beneath his feet. The roof of the shack was only inches from his face.
More light sliced in through the boards, marking multiple sources. The boards seemed transparent, as if they formed only the ghost of a shack.
Valiantine saw figures all around the structure. They moved back and forth around the perimeter like wraiths. He could not count them all, but guessed there to be at least a dozen of them.
Panic gripped his body, his mind. He tried again to speak. Then he tried to scream.
Something gave way, like the gates of a sluice.
As if on a wave, he rode the tide out of the shack and into the open air.
The first light of morning woke the army man. He found himself face down in the dirt outside the shack with Cabot lying a few feet away from him, but face up.
The Treasury Man sat up quickly, looking around for his hat. Valiantine cursed under his breath, then more loudly as he began to pick himself up off the ground. His suit was a mess, and he wiped at it uselessly with his fingers.
“Gas,” Cabot said with slurred tongue. “Hallucinations. Mob must have come back to scare us or—”
“You were there?” Valiantine asked, incredulously. “I thought you had left!”
“Yes, dammit, I was there. Why would you think I would leave?”
The lieutenant had no answer for that, but the feeling of being deserted hung on him like lead weights. A remonstration hung on the tip of his tongue, but instead he gave up on his suit and looked up at their surroundings.
“Good Lord...”
Cabot glanced up at the morning that greeted them.
A thick mist or fog clung to everything around them, save for their immediate area. Yellowish-gray, it obscured the trees, the buildings, and the fence. Even the shack was faint to their eyes.
Valiantine had never seen a fog so thick, so cloying. Above them and to the east, the sun tried vainly to break through, but offered only a pale, ghostly light. Somewhere, off in the distance, he could hear the clanging of a bell, echoing around the strange atmosphere of the neighborhood.
“What now?” Cabot asked.
The lieutenant swiveled his head around, looking for the fence they’d scaled the night before. Still woozy from the vapors and disturbed by the mists of the morning, he spat at the ground.
“Let’s find Carnavon. He has some answering to do for that rock in there.”
They made their way over the fence and down the alleyway to the street. The fog shouldered its way in, making them doubt their sense of direction. Finally, they stumbled out into the street and looked around, trying to find points of reference.
The crowd of reporters had returned to the engineer’s front gates. Their silhouettes in the mists reminded Valiantine of the figures outside the shack, and he felt his anger begin to rise up and through him.
“We told them to disp—”
Cabot grabbed his coat sleeve, pulling him back. “Look!” he shouted, pointing upward.
Large, dark shapes floated in the fog above them, drifting on straight paths, but on different trajectories. They made no sound.
Valiantine rubbed at his eyes, trying to clear them. The shapes remained. It was like looking up through water at the hulls of immense sailing vessels in the sky.
He glanced at the reporters; none of them seemed to have noticed the phenomenon.
He took a step, but before he could complete it he was rocked back on his heel by a bone-crushing detonation somewhere above him.
Another burst immediately following the first shook the entire area, buildings and all. A fiery explosion some yards from them nearly knocked them to the ground.
Carnavon’s laboratory and offices blew apart in the fog.
Valiantine recognized it instantly as cannon fire.
There was no mistaking it; in fact, the distinct sound of it was etched into every fiber of his being after his accident at the fort a year earlier. He vibrated from its deep bass expulsion, once again feeling the dread of its voice and the impact on his body.
People started screaming. A few ran past the two agents, fleeing the scene. The lieutenant looked up to the sky once more, practically frozen to the spot, a witness to the incomprehensible violence raining down around him.
Multiple cannon bursts sounded. Buildings exploded. The whistling arcs of cannonballs joined with the explosions to create a surreal tableau, one that should not, could not exist to Valiantine’s way of thinking.
The dark shapes in the sky continued to move back and forth, undefined, but damning in their sowing the seeds of destruction.
Finally uprooting himself, Valiantine raced past Cabot and toward the alley. His partner shouted after him, but he ignored the Treasury man and kept running.
The fog grew heavier, mingled with the smoke from the collapsed buildings. Behind him, the lieutenant heard the report of a pistol and turned to see Cabot pointing his Smith & Wesson .32 at the shapes in the sky and discharging it.
The cannon fire stopped. A strange, pregnant silence hung in the air. He could just make out the sounds of wailing somewhere out on the street. This brought him up quick, and he turned back to try and find the source of the cries. There, on the street, under the ruins of the large fence around the engineer’s property, he found Starla Ashton.
The reporter lay there, broken and bleeding, shards of wood stuck in her at various points on her body. Her dead eyes stared up at the looming shapes in the foggy skies.
A man who appeared to be the same reporter who came to her defense against Valiantine kneeled by her side, holding her cold hand and wailing. Suffused with discordant feelings, the lieutenant offered no help or comfort to the man, only stood by and witnessed the little scene.
The cannon fire had not begun anew. He turned away from Miss Ashton’s body and trudged back down the street toward the mouth of the alley, having no idea whatsoever what had become of Cabot. He half-expected to come across the Treasury man’s t
orn-apart body in the street.
A figure walked out of the fog before him, from out of the alley. Valiantine peered through the cloying mists to discern its identity. With a start, he saw it was Awanai, the Indiana bandit.
He knew for certain it was not Andrew Carnavon, but the man with whom he’d shared moonshine along the shore of an Indiana lake. Fury sprouted within him as he saw the way the man sauntered away from the destruction of the compound, seemingly without a care in the world.
Valiantine also at first thought the man had floated out of the alleyway, but dispensed the thought as a product of the mists.
Operating on raw instinct, he pulled his pistol from his pocket and fired at the bandit.
The cannon fire started again a split second later.
Valiantine’s shot shattered against the wall of a neighboring building. The army man cursed his poor aim as the bandit looked over at his assailant, narrowing his eyes as if to make him out. Then, he simply disappeared into the fog.
Explosions set fire to the air all around the lieutenant. He looked up to see an entire brick wall falling toward him, over him. Someone bellowed his name and something caught him around the waist, yanking him backward and to the hard ground. The back of his head smacked the dirt and he saw stars.
Bricks bounced off him, hitting his shoes and legs. Valiantine lay back and wished for it all to stop. Just stop. Once and for all.
Then, he passed out.
“Carnavon?”
“Dead.”
“His compound?”
“Almost completely destroyed.”
“And the shack?”
“Utterly obliterated.”
Lieutenant Michael Valiantine lounged on a small settee in the lobby of the Detroit hotel at which they’d made a temporary headquarters. His head hurt. No, that wasn’t entirely correct. Everything hurt, every inch of him.
“How do they explain the destruction?” he asked Cabot, fingering a large welt on his head.
The Treasury man reached up to push back a nonexistent hat and rubbed at his forehead instead.
“Lost my favorite hat. Anyway, the local authorities have made a ‘preliminary deduction’ that the explosions were caused by either a faulty boiler or ‘unidentified chemical compounds’ of Carnavon’s.”
“But we know better,” Valiantine said, staring at his partner with cold eyes.
Cabot furrowed his brow and frowned. “Do we? Do we actually know better?”
Valiantine sucked in breath and let it all out again in a mighty sigh.
“You comported yourself well,” he told the younger man. “And you saved my life. I’m very grateful for that.”
Cabot paced back and forth before him. “You would have done the same for me. Think nothing of it.”
In reality, Valiantine thought much of it. In fact, he decided there and then, the entire situation with the Treasury man could not continue as it had. The sighting of Awanai, his uncanny resemblance to the engineer, the supposed meteorite, the shapes in the sky themselves—every bit of it demanded more than one mind on the job to sift through their meaning.
“Cabot,” he began, “on the train, you said you knew there was something I wasn’t telling you. You were correct in that assessment.”
His partner raised one eyebrow, pausing in his pacing.
“Sit down, man. I have a story to tell you about an item or two I may have left out of the report on my Indiana mission.
“You’ve earned it.”
GRACE FOR THE DEAD
Duane Spurlock
August 1897
Cabot had gained a partner only recently, but he already understood this sign: when a furrow appeared at the top of Valiantine’s nose, he was not happy.
The lieutenant said, “We can hardly go about our campaign without attracting undue attention if we present ourselves immediately to the Chief of Police.”
“We would soon be found out and invited to visit the chief,” Cabot answered. “I am known here.”
Here was Louisville, Kentucky.
The town had been Cabot’s home before he went east to seek employment with the Federal government. What he had learned on the police force in this city that bustled on the southern banks of the Ohio River had prepared him for the challenges he met in the capital on the Potomac.
“This is a sprawling river port,” Valiantine said. “How well can you be known here?”
“I am known by men on the police force,” Cabot said, “and once I am seen by a member of that department, or my presence is remarked to one of them, the chief will know soon enough. So we will begin there.”
“We will?” Cabot noted the ring of unyielding iron in the lieutenant’s voice. “Should we, however?”
“We will.”
After establishing a makeshift headquarters in Dayton, Ohio, the two had traveled south at the direction of their superiors. They now stepped off the ferry that brought them across the river onto the city wharf and began striding up a cobbled slope toward the backside of the buildings that lined Main Street, which paralleled the Ohio. Cabot caught the attention of a youngster, directed him to deliver their bags to a hotel, and dropped some coins in the boy’s hand.
The lieutenant had recommended taking the train all the way to the Louisville depot. Instead, Cabot had them leave the train to cross the river by ferry. “You learn a lot from boatmen,” he’d said. And they had learned something: they had overheard some of the crew talking about strange lights appearing in the sky over the river.
Riverside business made a lively scene at midafternoon. Mules and horses pulled wagons loaded with hogsheads filled with tobacco, salted meats, and more. Animals and humans brayed, shouted, and clattered about between bales of hemp and stacked crates of farm implements.
Reaching the street, Cabot continued to stride purposefully along.
Valiantine protested: “Can’t we ride there?”
The youthfulness of Cabot’s features had melted away, replaced by a focused scowl. A glance at his face made others step out of his way. “I have been gone from here long enough that I need to learn what has changed. I can best do this afoot.” Not far from their present location, Yankee Bligh had taught Cabot this lesson: Ride about town and you’ll know the flow of the buildings. Walk a town’s streets and you’ll know your way around like the ones who live there.
He slowed just enough to speak a conciliatory word to Valiantine: “I guess I look something like a hound at work.”
“No, your nose and tail are both too short.”
Cabot almost smiled.
Soon enough, the two stood in the office of Thomas Taylor, Chief of the Department of Police for the City of Louisville.
His nose was red, his forehead high, his hair and mustache thick and dark brown. His eyes lacked humor.
Taylor stood before his black desk and did not invite his visitors to sit.
“Cabot, I’ve not seen you since you left the department. Has our nation’s capital come to bore you? You’ve returned home to seek more excitement? Or has the District of Columbia simply tired of you?”
Cabot smiled. “I’ve come here as part of an investigation.” He gestured. “Chief Taylor, my partner, Agent Valiantine.”
Taylor did not extend a hand, but offered a curt nod. Valiantine made an even slighter nod.
The chief returned his gaze to Cabot. “I know you work for the Treasury. Are you here about the coins?”
Surprise tightened Cabot’s chest. Remembering the dangers he’d encountered while tracking down coins in Kansas ran a cold thrill along his ribs. He cleared his throat before speaking. “Coins?”
Taylor’s face did not change expression. And he did not answer immediately. When he spoke, his voice carried no hint of what he was thinking. “Yes. Gold coins. Three. They were found by a watchman near the Canal. He turned them over to his supervisor, who notified the department. Gold coins are rarely left behind on the ground without someone missing them at some point.”
; Cabot asked, “Has anyone reported them missing?”
“Not yet. But I don’t recognize them. I’ll see you get a look at them before you leave. Perhaps your work with the Treasury will allow you to identify their origin.”
The chief paused. He didn’t blink as he stared at Cabot. He said, “The coins were found only yesterday. To be here now, you must already have been on your way to town before then. So apparently some other reason has brought you to my office. Why are you here?”
Cabot held his breath a moment before answering. He remembered Yankee Bligh once saying, When you have questions, try to control the meeting as best you can. If you can’t control the meeting, control your answers. He’d had no control over this encounter—Chief Taylor had the advantage today. Cabot made sure his expression didn’t give away a clue to his frustration. Still, he had unexpectedly learned about some mysterious coins, so perhaps the meeting hadn’t gotten completely out of hand.
“We’re investigating reports,” he finally said, “of things people have seen in the air.”
“In the air?” Taylor blinked. He looked at Valiantine, then back to Cabot. “Like balloons?”
“I rely upon your professional discretion,” Cabot said. Taylor responded by lifting his chin, and he appeared more attentive. Cabot continued: “No, not balloons, but something large. Like a boat, you might say. But not with the river as its home. Instead, the air.”
Chief Taylor’s gaze again went from one visitor to the other. “That’s preposterous.”
Cabot made a slight gesture. “There are reports. We are investigating them. You have not heard of them?” He knew this type of question could work against his wishes: Taylor’s pride might be offended by the suggestion that his knowledge about the city—the leverage for much of his authority—might be lacking.
“I’ve heard gossip,” Taylor admitted, “fanciful tales from fools too drunk to keep from tumbling into the street from the saloon door. You’ve actually come here to chase such phantasms?”