by Siena West
“Well, there’s no doubt Greenlaw is responsible for the vandalism at Bluestone Pueblo,” Maggie said. She paused for dramatic effect. “We have proof—we brought back the hat and the cigarette stuff!” Cole and Maggie whirled about in a little victory dance.
In unison, they sang a verse from a Talking Heads song. Where on earth did these kids learn all these old songs by heart? Elena wondered.
“We documented the damage,” Cole said when they had quieted. “We took tons of photos, of the hat, the pot holes, everything. I even took GPS readings.” With a flourish, he opened the saddlebag and showed Elena the evidence.
Maggie looked adoringly at him. “Isn’t my honey smart?”
Elena grinned at them, elated. “Not bad for grad students,” she said. “Jorgensen will be one happy FBI agent.”
If Greenlaw had carried out all the pot hunting they’d seen that summer, he’d been a busy man. Looting ruins on rez land and Forest land—every law-enforcement officer in east-central Arizona would want a piece of him. But did Greenlaw vandalize Mel’s room? The rancher wouldn’t have known everyone would be out of camp at Besh-ba-gowah that day, and he hadn’t seen the room they were excavating.
“I’ll call Sandy tomorrow,” Elena said. “He’ll want to see the photos and the evidence.”
The director grabbed the two. “Group hug! We caught the sonofabitch!”
“Tequila!” Maggie said, ebullient.
As they trooped out of the office, Maggie and Cole still chattering and breaking into song, it startled them to find Caleb standing on the stair landing. The young man looked uncertain and frightened.
“Did you need something?” Elena asked.
“I don’t—I’m—I was just coming to ask you about work next summer,” Caleb stammered. “You’re busy. I’ll come back another time.” Before Elena could reply, he fled down the stairs.
“That was strange,” Maggie remarked.
“No shit,” Cole said. “Caleb looked scared. I wonder why?”
Chapter 32
The Devil’s Own
Caleb had disappeared. He didn’t show for breakfast or report for work the morning after Cole and Maggie found Greenlaw’s hat. Around nine o’clock, Mel took Tim and went to roust Caleb because she didn’t want to do it alone. Caleb had camped near the Apache laborers, setting up a shade and sleeping in the bed of his truck. There was no trace of him at the campsite, just a square of flattened grass and tracks where he had parked his truck.
“What the hell?” Tim scuffed up his hair. “Caleb’s gone.”
“Guess he didn’t say boo to Elena, either,” Mel said. “She’s gonna be madder than hell. I can hear the Spanish curses now.”
“He’ll be back. He’ll want his last paycheck.”
Tim was wrong. They never saw Caleb again.
* * *
Elena was furious when she learned about Caleb, but she was mad at herself. Too late, she remembered she never checked the tires on his truck. Later, they would find fresh tracks on the road leading out of camp, and someone had cut the chain on the gate again. The director did not understand why he bolted from the ranch, but it was becoming clear that Caleb was the one who stole the artifacts from Mel’s room. The unpleasant truth was that he was also the person who set the lab on fire and stole the boxes of human remains stored in the annex. Caleb must have fled the camp on the night of the fire, taking the bone boxes with him. And it was he who cut the chain on the gate. It was so sad to recall the ugly message scrawled on the annex wall. Elena had tried to be kind to Caleb, but her kindness had gained her nothing and cost Norm the laboratory. It had nearly cost them the rest of the ranch and possibly even their lives.
Ninguna buena acción queda sin castigo, she whispered to herself. No good deed goes unpunished.
* * *
Tim and Elena decided to backfill the excavation units in the pasture to get a head start on that chore. Tim headed down there after they had broken the news of Caleb’s disappearance to the director. After the LiDAR folks mapped the bones, and the crew removed them, Tim and Elena were done with the bone bed. They had never explored below the level of the bones as they planned, and the excavation units stood empty, a peril to the cattle. Tim’s crew would remove the plastic and tarps in the units—they would reuse them next season—and pile backdirt into them. Later, Norm would come along with the backhoe and push the stones it had taken so much hard labor to remove back into the holes. Then it would be over, at last. Or so Elena prayed.
Tim was gone for less than an hour when he materialized at the door to Elena’s office. His hair was rucked into unruly tufts and a look of utter bafflement mixed with a touch of fear clouded his expression.
“Elena, you need to come to the pasture. There’s something you should see.”
“What is it now, Tim?” she snapped. The director was not a happy camper on this day of unpleasant surprises.
Tim raked his hair. “It’s hard to explain. Easier if you just come and look.” Tim’s manner indicated something was terribly wrong, and he had addressed her by her first name—never a good sign. Elena was ashamed of her sharpness, and they walked together to the pasture.
They found the crew standing around one of the excavation units, looking uncomfortable and frightened.
“We started with this unit, and we saw the tarp was moving.”
“Moving?”
“Yeah, like there was something underneath, maybe a trapped animal.” Tim’s rumpled hair was bright in the sunlight.
“So we pulled back a corner. And we found this.”
Tim drew Elena to the edge of the unit—even now, with the bones gone, she stayed as far away from the excavation as she could—and pointed. On the bottom of the unit, a writhing mass of living creatures moved sinuously. Elena saw snakes, frogs, toads, and insects: centipedes, cockroaches, scorpions, millipedes, wasps, venomous spiders, and big, hairy tarantulas. It seemed like every kind of stinging insect in the world crawled in the pit, and the snakes slithered over each other with sickening slickness. The heaving mass roiled like the surface of the ocean. At times, a frog leaped above the undulating surface. The snick and click of horny shells and legs and the hissing of roaches and snakes were audible.
Elena stopped breathing and forced down the involuntary scream that arose.
“Madre de Dios!” She made the sign of the cross, although she hadn’t been to Mass in years. The moving pile of living creatures was something from another world, like a scene from Dante’s Inferno. The smell of brimstone seemed to rise from the moving monstrosity.
“Tía, I’m afraid to say, but—” He stopped, reluctant to continue.
“Come on, Tim. Spit it out.”
“Elena, it’s the same in all the excavation units. We checked. Every single one.”
The earth seemed to move beneath Elena’s feet, and a roaring filled her ears. They had removed the charred and chopped-up bones, but it had not exorcised the malignancy. Instead, as the Hopi believed, the abomination spawned a horde of nasty creatures, and excavation had sent it into the world to harm. The roiling, dark mass was the devil’s own child.
By sheer force of will, Elena calmed herself. When she felt steady once more, the director began giving orders.
“This is incredibly dangerous. There are poisonous snakes in there—venomous insects, too. I don’t know if those horrid things can climb out of the pit, but if they do—” She turned to the student crew. “You guys go back to camp. Tell no one about this, hear? I don’t want gawkers here, getting too close.”
Elena stopped, curious. “Tim, how on earth did you get the units uncovered without getting hurt?”
“Shovels, rakes, and these—” Tim brandished the long-handled tongs Norm used to pull steaks from the fire when he grilled outdoors.
“Norm let me borrow these.” He grinned, and the dark moment passed.
“Smart. Okay—you stay and guard these pits from hell—from
a safe distance. Don’t let anyone come near the units. I’ll get Norm right now. No way are we going to backfill by hand.”
* * *
Thank God no one was hurt, Elena thought, as she hurried back to the ranch house. There was enough toxin and venom in those pits to kill everyone in camp.
“Jesus God in heaven!” Norm sputtered when she explained the desperate situation to him. “I wondered why Tim wanted the tongs. Where the hell did those critters come from?”
“Hell, indeed,” Elena said. “Tell the kitchen crew they’ll have to get lunch on the table by themselves. We need to take care of this now.” She practically dragged Norm away from the kitchen.
* * *
Elena knew they would have to burn the vile creatures in the pits. It wouldn’t be enough to cover them with dirt and rocks. The lab crew filled gas cans, and Elena drove them to the pasture in Norm’s pickup. Norm drove the backhoe.
They drenched the creatures in the first pit with gasoline, and then Norm tossed in a match. The whump and whoosh of the gas catching fire was gratifying. They repeated the process with the rest of the units, one by one. They stood transfixed as columns of black, oily smoke rose into the clean, blue air. An orange flame shot into the air occasionally, signaling the explosion of a creature. The stench of the burning creatures was nauseating.
When the flames died down, Norm fired up the backhoe and filled the pits with the dirt and stones the excavators had toiled to remove. They worked through lunch until they filled the last unit, and Norm smoothed the area with the hoe. The pasture looked placid and safe—as if no abomination had ever lurked belowground.
Elena knew better. Horrendous things had transpired, and she blamed it all on the vile spirits of the butchered dead in the bone bed. Feeling a little more optimistic, she remained in the pasture while Norm trundled the backhoe back to camp, followed by Tim and the lab crew in the pickup.Would this be the end? She wondered.Or would the nightmare continue?
Chapter 33
Banishing Spell
Back in her office, Elena sat at her desk, drumming her fingers on the top. The afternoon’s terrifying events kept swirling in her thoughts. It seemed impossible to stop thinking about them. Tim, the crew, and Norm shared a late lunch in the kitchen after their backfilling work. Their voices drifted across the freshly seeded, greening lawn. Norm had strung flagging tape on the fence to keep the kids off the lawn, and it looked like a crime scene. Poor Norm had worked hard to get his garden back in order after the fire, and the newly planted flower beds were just starting to bloom.
As Elena gazed at the garden, one thought was paramount: Would it be enough to pile cold stone in the excavation units? Or would tendrils of malevolence curl toward the light like a poisonous plant bearing strange fruit of toxic creatures?
“Enough,” Elena whispered to herself. He tenido suficiente. Es hora de traer este horror a su fin. It was long past time to get rid of the sorcerer’s bundle Cimelli gave her. The witchcraft charm may have been the source of the recent events that had befallen the camp. Or it might have served as a simple catalyst, an accelerant to increase the power of the malignancy that lay in the pasture. Regardless, today must be the end of her dalliance with the unfortunate gift. The vile creatures in the excavation units were the final straw.
But how could she destroy the charm? It wouldn’t be possible to burn the crude stone animals, and burying them seemed unlikely to be effective. Despite her upbringing amid brujería and the New Mexican brand of Catholicism, she had no personal experience with witchcraft and charms. Elena was reluctant to ask Sue how to reverse a curse, because she would think the director was crazy. But in the far reaches of her memory, Elena recalled a book she had read long ago on brujería. It had contained a recipe for a banishing spell. Can I remember enough to make it work?
The spell was based on sharp objects—pins, needles, and similar things, she recalled. She would put everything in a jar. A drop of her blood added to the jar would affix the spell. Then she would seal the jar and bury it in an isolated place or a crossroads at midnight. As long as nothing disturbed the jar, the spell would protect from black magic. Because no crossroads were nearby, an isolated place would have to suffice. Although just about every place on the Taylor Ranch was isolated, some were more so than others. Elena decided on an old spring, now dried up, in the hills about a mile down the back road east of camp. No water was there to lure cattle or cowboys chasing them. The jar should stay there for years, perhaps forever.
Was that everything needed for the spell? For the first time that summer, she missed the Internet, because it would have provided answers in seconds. I can’t believe I’m doing this, she thought as she started.
Although she felt like a fool, she collected what she needed. Elena found safety pins, a needle, and straight pins among her own things. Razor blades? Elena tiptoed into Norm’s bathroom like a thief. She found his old-fashioned razor and blades in the medicine cabinet. He won’t notice one or two missing blades. In the barn, she collected a handful of horseshoe nails along with rusty 16d nails and a curl of old barbed wire. She also took a shovel and duct tape from the tool shed.
Elena hid everything under the bed. The crews would soon return from work, and it was time to open the bar. She would have to finish later.
* * *
Elena joined the kitchen crew before supper. “I owe you, Norm,” she told him. “You probably saved our lives. What if those snakes had gotten out? I saw rattlers and what I thought was a coral snake.”
It was the first time she had seen Norm blush. “Aw, I didn’t do nothin’ special,” he mumbled. “We would have backfilled, anyway. Just had to do it a little earlier than we planned. And except for that awful smell, it wasn’t too bad.”
“Well, thank you nevertheless. By the way, I’m wondering if you have a container with a lid I could borrow?”
“Look in the annex. There’s old canning jars with lids in there.”
“Thanks.” She was grateful he hadn’t asked her why she wanted the jar.
As Elena ate dinner with the crew, talking, laughing, and making plans for the coming week, she also was planning how she could sneak out of camp after dark. I’ll have to hike there. Since the thefts and arson, everyone in camp was alert to strange noises. Starting her truck in the middle of the night and driving away was out of the question.
* * *
After dinner, Elena finished the banishing spell, hoping no one would come over for a drink or small talk. A trail used by Norm’s cattle led from Elena’s cabin to a pasture. In the soft, blue evening light, she trekked down the trail. In the pasture, she found sturdy rocks, one of them flat, that would serve as anvil and hammer. With great concentration, she hammered and crushed the crude stone animals, the curious natural stones, and the crystal, wishing she were smashing Cimelli’s bones. The sound of the little animals cracking to bits under the hammer stone was eminently satisfying. The director poured the stone crumbs into the jar.
Back in her cabin, Elena assembled the banishing-spell jar. She added the pins, needles, and other sharp things she collected. With her pocket knife, she shredded the leather pouch that had contained the charm and added the bits to the jar. Outside, she burned the feathers in the bundle over the jar to collect the ashes, her nose tickling with the odor.
Now what? Had she remembered the spell correctly?
Surely there was something else? The pressure on her bladder—she hadn’t visited the bathroom or outhouse since before supper—gave her an idea. Elena would use her own urine. It may not have been in the original recipe, but it would serve. She squatted behind her cabin, praying that no one would see her, and peed into the canning jar. Then she pricked her finger with the tip of her knife and pressed until drops of blood fell crimson into the jar. She screwed the lid on and sealed it with duct tape. She had finished.
Elena expected to feel foolish. Instead, she was triumphant.
She stayed in her ca
bin, restless, pottering about with little enthusiasm. In case someone stopped by, she hid the jar, but she was lucky. No one came by for a drink or to chat. Elena was ready to scream from the tension until at last, Norm turned off the generator, and the camp grew quiet. The director retrieved the jar, stuffed it into a backpack, and crept outside, trying not to make noise. Elena picked up the shovel and balanced it on her shoulder like a miner with a pick. She started down the back road, using the flashlight only when she was safely beyond the camp.
At the old spring, she chose a spot under a tall yucca that would offer protection. She propped up the flashlight and began to dig. It didn’t take long because the ground was damp after the last rain. When the hole was deep enough, Elena checked the time on her phone; it was a minute or two before midnight. Breathless, she dropped the jar into the hole. A real spell should include a banishing incantation, but her slim knowledge of brujería didn’t extend that far. A nice Catholic prayer would be as efficacious as any incantation. She prayed to Madre de Dios, the Virgin Mother, as she filled in the hole, choosing a prayer to the Virgin of Guadalupe she remembered from childhood. When she had finished the prayer and filled the hole, she stomped on the dirt to pack it down well. A scattering of grass, pebbles, and pine cones concealed the fresh dirt from casual eyes. For good measure, she shoveled up prickly pear cactus growing nearby. The pads would take root and cover the spot, keeping it safe from intruders and prying eyes.
It was done.
Chapter 34
Fugitive
A line of white County sheriff trucks and black Bureau SUVs roared down the road into Otis Greenlaw’s ranch. The convoy swept under the line of Pinedale birds carved on the gate crossbar and into the yard in front of the house. The vehicles pulled to a stop, sliding in the mud from the last rain. FBI agents and uniformed deputies poured out, their weapons drawn.