Obsidian Tears (Apparition Lake Book 2)

by Daniel D. Lamoreux

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  About the Authors

  Obsidian Tears

  Daniel D. Lamoreux, Doug Lamoreux

  Copyright (C) 2016 Daniel D. Lamoreux and Doug Lamoreux

  Layout Copyright (C) 2016 by Creativia

  Published 2016 by Creativia

  eBook design by Creativia (www.creativia.org)

  Cover art by http://www.thecovercollection.com/

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

  Chapter 1

  An observer, straining in the dark, may have caught a glimpse of the man's stark silhouette among the night's shadows as he sat amid the rocks. A listener might have heard his delirious chant echoed only by the call of night birds and the sorrowful howl of a distant wolf. The brisk night air might have brought an onlooker a whiff of herbs smoldering in the smudge bowl on the ground before his folded knees or, possibly, the skunkish odor of smoke coiling up from his medicine pipe. But may have and might were merely dreams. The only observer, listener, or onlooker was the cold hard earth. All else was solitude… and loneliness.

  After a long journey into a vast wilderness Nakos, a young Arapaho medicine man, traveled further yet into a deep and long sought-after vision.

  The year was 1740 but nobody within thousands of miles knew that or cared. The holy man sat on a tiny spot in the vast Yellowstone-Absaroka region of the Rocky Mountains in northwestern Wyoming. That didn't matter either. More than one hundred years would pass before any of those areas were given any of those names. This was the wilderness, the holy place, place of the rocks and writing, place of Nakos' vision quest, south of his home in the Stinking Country. That was all.

  Though sitting on the firm ground in that dark valley, Nakos had a sudden feeling the bottom had dropped from his stomach and an equally sudden feeling of weightlessness. Still chanting, he opened his eyelids just enough to find himself rising into the air, over the rocks, over the prairie, and up above the mountains. Rising to float in the moonlit sky. His hands shaking, he brought the pipe to his lips again, and drew deeply. He held the warm smoke in his lungs; held it, then let it escape.

  Slowly, barely perceptibly, four gigantic clouds swirled into existence in the otherwise clear night and rolling, surrounded him. Despite his nervousness at rising like a rope of pipe smoke, Nakos felt a child-like wave of delight and awe. Then the clouds grew so black they nearly disappeared in the night. Lightning exploded from each and Nakos was afraid. His fear grew with the storm.

  The chill wind began to toss his long black hair. The flashing clouds roiled and, still coming on, began to change their shapes, transforming. Soon they were more than clouds, they were the images of four huge creatures. As they assumed those shapes, the Arapaho names of each – in the resonant voice of an unknown speaker – thundered in the shaman's head. The first cloud rolled into the likeness of the hooxei. (“Hoo-chay” Nakos heard.) The second cloud became a beexou (as “Ba-ch-o” rang in his ears). The third cloud took the shape of the to'uu3eebexookee. (“Ta-uu-tha-bech-au-gaa” the voice said.) The fourth became a 3io'kuutoo. (“Thio-guu-taw” came the cry.) Another instant and the images were more than likeness, more than shape; the creatures of the clouds came alive and from their places in the sky, still flashing lightning, stalked ever-closer to Nakos.

  Torch in hand and still unsure of himself, Nakos accepted the new unsought role as holy man. He would persevere. Still stunned and shaking, Nakos climbed the escarpment to a portion of rock partially hidden from the valley below but easily accessible to future servants of the Great Spirit. Like him, Nakos believed, they would be guided to this secreted place. He fixed the torch into the dirt between the rocks to illuminate his work as he rubbed the face of the chosen rock, cleaning dirt from the flat surface. He lifted a burin from his medicine bag and, though he wasn't an artist in anyone's estimation, began to chisel at the face of the rock. He'd been given a vision, an answer to the terror that plagued his people, and it was his duty before returning home to pass that knowledge on. Wasn't it? Holy men made records here and that's what he was.

  Nakos scratched at the rock, making his picture, permanently etching a rude likeness of the four creatures sent by the Great Spirit and of the story he'd been told. Finished he leaned back to examine his work, accidentally burned himself on the torch and, overreacting, plunged himself into darkness. Nakos felt the fool. But he also felt relief. He was no artist. He was a shaman only from heredity – and necessity. With the picture complete and the story told it was time to return home. More than time. The tribe was in great danger and, with his message from the gods, only he could save them.

  Days later and miles north, Nakos paddled a canoe across a sheet of black glass, the lake of the beaver, on the last leg of his journey home. Among the billions of stars that usually glistened in the night, a single brilliant star, a gift of the gods, had led him to the holy place. Now, on his return, the sky was black as pitch, the guiding star gone and the usual night lights hidden by thick clouds. A storm could be heard, more than seen, rolling in from the west. The ebony of unlit wilderness ruled the land.

  Nakos' heart was heavy. He'd carried a great burden into the feral wilds of the mountains in his quest for a vision. A great evil had been devastating his people and he'd been sent in search of wisdom. He was returning with an answer, and good news, for his people but the days ahead were perilous and much blood and many tears would be shed before the promised ending would be at hand. Still, Nakos knew, it was his place to be of good cheer. The four spirits had come to him, pledges and commitments had been exchanged and, if he and his people were faithful… if he and his people were faithful…

  Nakos paddled the long lake ashamed that his fears were returning. The deep black waters were vast and his home far away. Like the surrounding darkness his fears consumed him. He thought himself unfit to replace his late father as shaman. He was too young and too inexperienced to confront the burden thrust upon him or the evil forced upon his people.

  A sliver of moonlight burst through a gap
in the overcast sky, dissolved, then reemerged with the movement of the clouds. As the light sparked and faded across the landscape it enhanced the shadows of the earth and savage corners of Nakos' mind and gave surreal animation to the rocks and trees encircling him. Adrenaline heightened his senses, amplified the whispers of the night, twisting them into the unfamiliar. Beyond the lake shore to his right he saw movement in the trees. Foraging nocturnal animals? The winds of autumn?

  Like the breath of the seasons a breeze came from across the water carrying a faint, almost musical, cry. But it wasn't music. It was the familiar voice of a woman, the echoing resonance of his wife, calling his name. Nakos was startled and muttered, “This cannot be” under his breath. He was still miles from home. Eyes closed and ears to the wind, he listened, then shouted, “Who calls?”

  There was no answer. Though far from shore the forest encroached upon his senses, closing in and stifling him. More it felt alive with something in the dark watching him, following him. Nakos was afraid for he knew he wasn't alone. He heard it again. A woman's voice, his wife's despairing call, wailing on the wind. But it couldn't be. “Who calls?” Nakos shouted to the night.

  Silence. Not a sound but the wind and the uneven stroke of his oar in the glassy water. Nakos swallowed hard. He didn't believe it, couldn't believe it was–

  His thought was interrupted by another cry, another voice on the wind over the water. A woman's voice too, but different, higher and filled with as much pain as despair. Calling, calling to him. Then a scream, in terror, his daughter's scream. But it could not be. He was miles from… “Who calls?” Nakos hollered. “Who calls?”

  The shaman's horror was great. And it had only begun. A third voice joined the ghostly chorus, resonant too, the voice of a young man. The voice of his son begging his forgiveness for having failed him. “No,” Nakos cried. “No!”

  Now the wind was a gale of misery, three voices in the night, three pitiful cries; the wailing of his wife, his daughter, and his son. But he was miles from home. It could not be.

  “Who calls?” Nakos demanded in anger and fear. “Who calls? Who calls?”

  Chapter 2

  Tragedy, a simple word coined to describe and encapsulate the horrible. Its use conjured stark but surprisingly fleeting emotions. Tragedy was rarely personal; it happened to others. If close in time, it was usually distant in space. If close in space, a tragedy was often distant in time. Most could be acknowledged, or ignored, then forgotten with little effort on either end. Still the world was rife with tragedy; many caused by the world itself.

  The year was still fresh in January 1999, when this story took place, when an earthquake struck Colombia, South America. It killed nearly 300 people and injured a thousand. It was a tragedy. When August arrived the residents of Izmit, Turkey felt the ground shake. 17,000 died while another 44,000 were hurt. In early September, Athens, Greece lost 143 lives and 50,000 went homeless as a new quake violently shook the planet. Tragedies all, but distant in time and space and easily left behind by those not intimately affected. Now, in late September, no one in the Greater Yellowstone Area remembered the details, or could relate a specific misfortune, felt by any of the year's earlier victims of tragedy. Fall had come to the northern Rocky Mountains and those living therein had their own troubles. It was human nature even in this neck-of-the-woods, a place that had experienced a like-tragedy.

  Only forty years had passed since the great quake of '59 had carved a path of death and destruction through the southwest corner of Montana not far from Yellowstone National Park. The earth shook and eighty million tons of rock crashed from the mountain top into a narrow canyon below, crushing and killing, tearing an open wound in the earth. It had been a catastrophic tragedy. But two score years had been enough for the acute pain to subside, for the memories to fade, and for new chapters of life to be written. An adequate length of time to allow the survivors to begin again, to create another generation, to add a new branch or two to the family tree. That same time period, 15,000 days, had seen the bridges and roads repaired and the buildings rebuilt. It was time enough for the open wound to fill with water, to teem with new life, to become Earthquake Lake, and to morph from a scar on the land from an earthly upheaval to a marvelous recreation destination for locals and tourists alike. Now fishermen plied ol' Quake Lake's depths for rainbow trout and German browns. Campers set up tents and parked their motorhomes along its shores. Photographers and hikers scampered among the rock ruins without a pause to marvel at the power of Ma Nature. When a thousand years was a mere tick of the geologic clock, forty years was nothing at all. But, human nature again, forty years was enough time for memory of a tragedy to become shadow and for lessons learned to be forgotten.

  To those frolicking now above ground who knew about it at all, the earth had rumbled, shifted, and slid once long ago. They could no longer feel the quiver of the ground beneath their feet. But those who studied such things understood something else entirely. The scientists knew that the crust of the earth in and around Yellowstone Park was in a state of flux. That the earth's underground plates continued to move, that magma chambers like monstrous super-heated water balloons continually shifted shape, relentlessly producing tremors, quakes, and aftershocks. That a new tragedy was always possible.

  “Perpetual activity” was the phrase used, measured in changing degrees. It was the term that best suited the geography and geology of the park. For those who knew him, the same phrase accurately described the physical, psychological, and emotional status of the park's chief ranger, Glenn Merrill.

  It had been three years since the incidents at Apparition Lake had taken place. While those tragedies were long forgotten by the general public, and therefore the National Park Service administration, they remained fresh in Glenn's mind. The only way he'd found to return normalcy to his life had been to keep himself busy enough to avoid revisiting that ordeal in his head.

  Thankfully, Yellowstone gave him plenty of help. The summer had been hectic, as anticipated, and activity remained strong despite their nearing the seasonal finish line. Visitor encounters with wildlife, the negative kind, had already reached record numbers for the year and his rangers were stepping up efforts in enforcement of proximity restrictions and public education. It was an incredible, dangerous time in the wild. The elk were starting into the rut, the bears were trying to put on fat, every critter was racing against the clock to prepare for the long winter instinct told them was right around the corner. The safest way for tourists and wild animals to get along, Glenn knew, was to keep them apart.

  Having dropped cargo at Old Faithful Village, Glenn turned his Suburban left out of the complex headed for the Ranger Station at the south entrance. Beside him was a case of informational fliers to be stuffed between the fold of the park's seasonal newspaper, with a map and a receipt for entrance fees. They'd be handed to each driver entering 'wonderland'. Most would wind up unread on the rear floor of the visitors' vehicles. Still it was the best the rangers could do outside of making direct contact. And, with over three million visitors expected before season's end, Glenn had nowhere near enough staff for one-on-one discussions with each. Put it in writing and pray it got read, that was the plan.

  A bright reflection glinted and caught Glenn's attention. He slowed his vehicle looking to his right down the Firehole River as it cut through thick timber coming off the Continental Divide headed north. The sun was overhead and the reflection came off the river amid the Kepler Cascades. Glenn turned into the roadside pullout to take a closer look.

  A closer look at Glenn might be in order. You don't get to be the chief ranger of the country's biggest, oldest National Park without being best at what you do. Glenn Merrill was everything you might imagine, from the shiny polished boots, up the creased olive pants and military gig line, past the olive duty jacket over starched khaki shirt, to a shaved square jaw that laughed and growled with ease and authority. On closer examination, the pinky on his right hand was permanently bent from
a bad break years before and the tip of his left index finger missing, different year, same reason. The outdoors was not a playground for weaklings. In his late thirties, tan, brown-eyed, with pepper hair life was shaking salt into, he was handsome enough to be in the movies but hadn't even had the time to see one in years. All holding a trooper's hat roughly six feet in the air.

  Glenn grabbed his binoculars. He stepped from the vehicle and, targeting the cascades, studied the glare from the water. Glenn lowered the glasses, wiped his eyes, gazed away to refocus, then lifted the binoculars for a second look. A grunt escaped his lips, the only evidence of his concern and amazement. But the chief ranger was amazed. He was seeing… what he saw. Glenn noted the time then climbed back into his vehicle and grabbed his radio microphone. “Dispatch, One-oh-one.”

  Headquarters responded immediately.

  “Locate one of our specialists for…” Glenn considered what science might best cover the situation. “I don't know, Geology, Geography, ask them. Send the winner my way. I've found what looks like an anomaly in the watercourse of the Firehole at Kepler Cascades. I need a trained set of eyes.”

  That done, Glenn studied the river again. He'd passed that way hundreds of times and knew that something had changed the way the sunlight reflected to that roadside pullout and to him. Whether or not it was natural remained to be seen but, to Glenn, it was clearly different. A new obstacle on the river bed had changed the course of the water.

  Since his first days in the Park Service, Glenn had been trained to watch for changes in the natural cycles around him. More so in Yellowstone National Park. The appearance of springs and steam vents, mud pots that quit bubbling, changes in the color of thermophiles around hot springs and geysers, any manner of detail or difference above ground in a system as hydrothermally and seismically active might signal important, even dangerous, changes below. Staff and visitors alike could be in jeopardy if those warning signs were not heeded. Glenn had long-since made it a habit to watch for change and never ignored what he saw.