by William Hawk
“Should I come?” asked Grace.
“No, you help Julia,” I said. “This is more important.”
I got down on my hands and knees and scampered through the tunnel. I made it through the tight spot in record time. The panic was propelling me.
I emerged from the tunnel, dusted myself off, and walked out to the mouth of the cave. It was raining full on now, and the valley smelled green and alive.
Then I saw him.
Sheriff Winters.
Tough guy. Cop. Julia’s father. He was standing before me, chatting with Cy. Another deputy stood behind him. Arthur sat on a rock nearby, a makeshift bandage around his torso, looking miserable.
The sheriff saw me, and a multitude of expressions passed over his face—contempt, surprise, sympathy, curiosity. I was struck by how changeable his face seemed to be.
I drew in a deep breath and strode forward. “Good afternoon, Sheriff.”
“William Hawk?” he said.
“Yes?”
“I inform you that I am placing you under arrest for assault. And probably a few other things we can discuss later.”
I decided to play dumb. “What did I do?”
“For one, the assault of a minor by the name of Dean Winters.” He paused. “My nephew.”
“This isn’t possible,” I said. “It was a complete misunderstanding…”
He cut me off with a hand. “I’ve seen the tape. You used some voodoo magic to assault that young man for the crime of speaking to his female cousin.” He paused again. “My daughter.”
I didn’t say anything this time, just stood there, uneasy, my eyes glancing at the weapon in his holster. I wasn’t sure what sort of legal power he had out here on the reservation.
“But that’s peanuts, son. You’re a suspect in a multiple homicide.”
“I didn’t kill my family.”
“We shall see. Now the most important question, and you better tell me what I want to hear. Where is my daughter?”
“I don’t know,” I lied.
“Last chance, Bucko.”
“I haven’t seen your daughter for a month.”
“High school security guard reported that she entered a vehicle whose description matches the one in the driveway of this man’s cabin.” He pointed at Cy.
“Coincidence,” I shrugged. “High school security guards are all idiots.”
He took a step forward and picked me up by the collar of my shirt and pushed me against the rock wall. I steeled myself and looked him in the eye.
His lips were clenched so tight that they grew white. “I will kill you with my own hands if you don’t tell me where she’s at.”
The deputy took a step forward, as if to restrain the sheriff, then stopped, thought better of it, and returned to his position. Cy and Arthur watched sadly. Neither of them had anything to do with the event in the sporting-goods store; and of course neither of them were wanted for murder. Neither of them could effectively stand up to a sheriff.
“Then you better kill me.”
“If something happened to her you can bet that I will,” he said. He motioned to his deputy. “Place him under arrest.”
The sheriff stepped away. The deputy removed the handcuffs from his belt and came over to me. “Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish.”
He turned me around and snapped the handcuffs on my wrists. They felt cold and sharp against the sensitive skin of my wrists. Then he faced me forward again and put a hand on my neck.
“Wait,” said Cy.
He stopped. I was turned around. The elderly Native American had stood up. “I know where your daughter is, but you have to promise me something.”
“I don’t negotiate,” said the sheriff.
“Then just do me this favor. Let him go, and arrest me instead.”
“For what?”
“The abduction of a minor. Your daughter, Julia.”
“But you didn’t abduct her,” said the sheriff.
“Yes, I did,” insisted Cy. “I admit to the crime.”
I stepped forward. “No, Cy!”
The sheriff looked at the deputy as if to say, what do you think? They exchanged shrugs. The deputy reached behind me, fumbled for his keys, then unlocked my hands. Shocked that they were letting me go, I shook out my arms. Nearby, I saw Sheriff Winters click his handcuffs onto Cy.
Then the sheriff looked over. “Lock him up again. We’re taking both of them.”
The sheriff gave Arthur a terrific shove, and he went sprawling backward onto the ground. I felt the deputy’s hand pushing me down to the ground too, and then his knee in my back, followed by the cold click of the steel on my wrists.
“It’s okay, William, don’t worry. I’ve had a good life. You haven’t done anything wrong, except get carried away with a new power that you didn’t know you had. That you didn’t even know you had.”
He was staring at me as he said that final sentence, and it dawned on me what he was trying to say. Cy wanted me to feel the same rage that I’d felt in the sporting goods store, and to use it—now.
I felt the power suddenly blossom inside of me.
“You lied to me!” I said.
“As you did to me,” answered the sheriff calmly. “My daughter is here somewhere. You’ll tell me soon.”
I felt the rage gathering inside of me. I felt the deputy yank me to my feet again. I could feel the cross throbbing on my left hand. I turned to the deputy.
“Start walking,” he said.
I watched myself knee him in the groin. The deputy doubled over, clutching his crotch. Then he reached for his weapon.
But I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t do anything except see red. It was like what happened in the sporting goods store, except ten times stronger. I kicked the weapon out of his hand and then concentrated all my energy on his being—and then I let him have it.
The force came out of me like a bolt from the hand of Zeus. The sheriff’s deputy was blown backward off his feet, his arms windmilling until he landed against the side of the cliff. I felt the rage building up again when a blow hit me in the back of the head. I fell forward onto the dirt again.
I rolled over on my side and looked up. Sheriff Winters was over me. He put his boot on my neck and pressed down. I couldn’t breathe, my hands were tied behind my back, and there was a row of sharp stones digging into my side. I winced, my face wrinkling into a grimace of pain, trying to summon whatever.
“Dammit,” said the sheriff, “you can add that, kid. That was an assault on a police officer…”
Then he stopped talking. The pressure from the boot on my neck let up. I gasped as the air rushed back into my lungs.
I looked up at Sheriff Winters. A look of horror appeared on his face, and he was looking at something behind me. I felt the hairs on my neck and arms stand up. I attempted to roll over, but it was too hard with the handcuffs.
But I had a direct view of Cy and Arthur, and their faces were even more shocked than the sheriff’s.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“It’s Little Horn,” said Cy.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Little Horn.
I jackknifed my body and rolled over into a crouch. With much difficulty, I tensed my abdominals and pulled myself up to my knees. Then I saw him, finally.
Roivas. Little Horn. Whatever you call him, he was unlike anything I’d seen before. We were the same age, but that’s where the similarities ended. He wore a navy-blue pinstripe suit with shiny shoes. What made him so horrific were the rows of little horns sprouting out of his—its?—chest, back and shoulders. They’d punched straight through the suit, making him, or it, look like an evil, demented cactus. I looked into his face and felt sick to my stomach. It had distorted itself int
o a dark mass.
“Oh my good God,” said Sheriff Winters, backpedaling.
Roivas took three steps toward the sheriff, who unholstered his weapon and tried to take aim with shaking hands, but Little Horn swept the weapon out of his hands.
“You’d better put away that Halloween costume and get down on your knees,” said the sheriff, struggling to sound unfazed, tough.
Suddenly, Little Horn drew himself up to his full height. He went from six feet to nine feet in an instant. It was terrifying, and I got to my feet and ran back into the cave and threw myself onto the ground beside Arthur, who looked as terrified as I felt.
Sheriff Winters stood his ground and drew his baton. His hand was shaking.
I watched as Little Horn raised his arm, reared back, and swung hard at the sheriff. The row of small horns on his sleeve slashed across the sheriff’s chest. Seven ribbons of red appeared and Sheriff Winters looked up with a dazed expression, then dropped to his knees and fell on his side.
Little Horn stepped forward and grabbed the man by the hair, then dragged him upright, the sheriff’s legs trailing behind like a rag doll’s in the dirt. Near the edge of the cliff, he let go, and the sheriff collapsed face-first on the ground. Then Little Horn went over to where the deputy had passed out and grabbed him by the hair and pulled him over to the sheriff. Their two bodies now lay side by side on the rock.
Little Horn turned and looked at Cy, Arthur and me. Its face was still a mass of dark anger; I couldn’t make out anything human in the morphing features.
It pointed at us. Then it let loose a piercing sound so eerie that my bowels nearly emptied when I heard it. I found myself cowering with Arthur. Cy took several steps backward into the cave and stood in front of us.
Little Horn picked up the sheriff and deputy—one man in each hand—and leaped over the side of the cliff.
And he was gone.
Cy and I ran over to the edge and looked down. The side of the mountain wasn’t totally vertical here, but it was still very steep. There was a thick growth of trees on the valley floor, about two hundred yards below us.
“There,” said Cy, pointing. “Little Horn dragged them there.”
“Is he going to kill them?”
Cy looked at me. “He’s been killing since the dawn of time. It’s easy for him.”
“Why didn’t he kill us?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t the time, I guess. Only he knows. But he will, soon, no doubt.”
“How did he find us?” I said.
“It was you. You revealed yourself by using that power on the deputy. It drew him like a moth to the flame.”
Down below us, I saw a tree shake. “We should get out of here.”
“We might be able to get a lead on him, and maybe even lose him, as long as you don’t expose yourself again.”
“But how are we going to get out of these handcuffs?”
“I don’t know. Sonny might be able to help. He’s always full of surprises. We’ll head over to his property.”
“But we have to get the girls out first.”
“Then hurry up.”
I ran back inside the cave, past where Arthur sat miserable on a rock, to the tunnel entrance. I bent over and shouted. “Julia and Grace, we really have to go.”
A moment later, Grace’s tiny voice answered. “She’s almost done with the sketches.”
“Finish up,” I shouted. “We have to go now. Hurry out.”
“Okaaay,” came Julia’s voice. I wasn’t looking forward to telling her what I’d just witnessed happen to her father.
I stood impatiently waiting at the mouth of the tunnel. It seemed to be taking them forever.
“How’s everything? You two coming?”
“This is really hard,” said Julia’s choked voice. “Can you come help us? I’m scared.”
“I don’t think so.”
“This is really scary and I’m afraid to move.”
I dropped my face to my chest and thought about it. I decided to enter and see how far I could make it with handcuffs on.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m coming.”
I crouched down and began moving in a frog squat. I knew the tunnel like the back of my own hands. It was hard going, and my neck was killing me. Then I got to the narrowest part—I was dreading this—and so I flopped forward on my face and chest. I began to worm with my hands behind me. The tunnel was so low here that my hands and handcuffs scraped on the ceiling. I felt the panic setting in, the claustrophobia, so I forced myself to move faster.
When I didn’t think I could scoot anymore, the tight spot opened up, and dripping with sweat, I pulled myself to my feet and staggered, bent over, to the end of the tunnel.
Julia grabbed me as I emerged into the Hall of Knowledge. I noticed that they had already packed everything into the bag again.
“Who put you in handcuffs?” said Julia.
I closed my eyes, wishing I could be anywhere else at that moment, not to have to be the one. I found myself finally saying the right words. “Your father.”
“What? He’s here? Outside the cave?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Is he trying to arrest you?”
“He … was.”
I let the implications of that sink in. “He left?”
As Julia dove into the tunnel, an enormous thud shook the entire cave. A pair of small rocks dropped onto the floor from the ceiling.
“What was that?” said Grace.
“Little Horn is here,” I whispered. “I used my power again and he found us.”
Her face grew as white as a bone. “He knows you’re here, and he knows I’m here.”
Another thud echoed through the cavern. We both raised our faces to the ceiling, since it seemed to be coming from overhead.
Then it dawned on me. “He’s trying to destroy the Hall of Knowledge.”
Without another word, we both crouched over and ran into the tunnel.
The thudding grew stronger as we monkey-walked down the tunnel. I heard rock beginning to crash down onto the cave floor. “Here’s the narrow part!” I shouted. “Down on your belly!”
Then I remembered the drawings.
Julia’s work was packed inside a bag inside the trolley pan. Normally I would pull it through when finished, but with the chaos raining down inside the Hall of Knowledge, I wasn’t sure there would be a Hall of Knowledge for much longer.
I turned and started back. “Where are you going?” she said.
“The drawings, I have to bring them by hand. You go. I’ll catch up.”
By the time I got back into Hall of Knowledge, an enormous crack was running down the center of the wall. The symbols had all vanished, almost the same way that a computer screen goes blank when it’s been damaged.
The enormous thuds rattled my teeth as I arched my back and reached into the bag. At last I felt the drawings, and stood up again. Just as I turned back to the tunnel, a wide beam of sunlight exploded upon the wall over my head. A huge crack sounded behind me as a three-foot-wide stone landed on the ground and broke in two.
Overhead, a shaft of sunlight had appeared in the ceiling of the cave. Looking down was a silhouette with hundreds of small horns.
Roivas.
He was destroying the Hall of Knowledge to stop his enemies and to find me, or Grace, or both of us.
I bent over and raced into the tunnel. This would have to be the fastest passage of my life.
I sweated through the tight space, rippling my body. I was so panicked that I bashed my head on the rock. That stopped me for a moment. Lying inside the tunnel, I heard more pieces of the Hall of Knowledge crash to the ground behind me.
Then I heard something even worse—a piercing scream that came roaring down the tunnel from behind me. Roivas had seen the tunnel, and possibly glimpsed me.
Total panic. I got moving again, my insides a tangle of fury, and a few seconds later I had squeezed through the tightest part of the passage. I got to my
feet and did the same awkward squat march down the remainder of the tunnel.
Behind me I could hear the gasps and the grunts and the shrieks of Roivas as he tried to fit himself through the tunnel. I didn’t dare turn and look back. I stayed focused on reaching the small circle of gray light that was growing bigger with every shuffle.
Then another massive thud, and I heard a symphony of destruction explode behind me. A gust of wind blew out from the tunnel all around me, and my hair blew up around my face. A tube of brown dust billowed out, making me cough.
A moment later, I emerged from the tunnel, nearly puking, doubled over with the handcuffs behind me. I tried to stand up, but my legs were cramped, and I fell over instead. I held on to the drawings behind my back.
I felt hands on me, pulling me to my feet. It was Grace.
“He’s trying to destroy the Hall of Knowledge.”
“And he already did,” I said, “but we saved the drawings.”
I turned around, and she took the papers from my hand. “Where are the others?”
“They went down into the valley. Cy said that we can take shelter in the native cemetery.”
We exited the cave and found the path to the right and moved quickly, hugging the edge of the cliff. The sounds of destruction grew farther behind us, and they were accompanied by an occasional whoop.
“It sounds like he’s having fun destroying it,” I said. “It’s hard to believe that you were born brother and sister.”
“Don’t remind me. Anyway, it’s only for this iteration.”
A few minutes later, we came around a bend, and directly below us was the area of the valley that Sonny had pointed out to me. It was also the place where I’d bounced off the invisible barrier.
“I don’t know what Cy has in mind, but this part of the valley is off limits to anyone who isn’t a native,” I said. “There’s a strange force field around it.”
“Maybe that’s why Cy is doing that,” she said. I followed her pointed finger to where Cy was on the ground, bowing his face, raising it to the sky, and repeating. Arthur and Julia sat nearby with their arms around one another.
We descended the scree-covered slope until we arrived at the group. Julia leaped to her feet and ran to deliver me a huge embrace. “We heard the destruction! You made it!”