Evil Spirits

by Mark Lukens

  And now it was time to face the Ancient Enemy.

  David climbed down the ladder into the pit. When he was on the hard, smooth floor of the pit, he walked towards the stack of rocks that looked like some kind of cairn. He had the wooden box from the hogan and he set it on top of the stack of flat rocks. He opened the box and took out the contents, laying them out on the flat rock. Most of the contents were immediately familiar to him and he would have known what to do with them even if he wouldn’t have had the letter from Joe Blackhorn. There was the small rattle with feathers and beads on it, the glass jar of owl’s blood, a small paintbrush, and the small black rocks. But the thing that intrigued David the most was the lone eagle feather. David picked up the feather and held it in his fingers, staring at it for a moment. He couldn’t say exactly how he knew, but he was sure this was the same feather Billy Nez had used in Hope’s End, the Billy Nez who had lived over a hundred years ago.

  It took David a few minutes to go through a similar ceremony that Blackhorn had performed in the church. He didn’t need to draw a circle around him because the medicine wheel of rocks was the circle of protection now. He opened the jar of owl’s blood and smeared a little of it on each wrist and on his cheeks underneath his eyes. He sang the ancient songs that Joe Blackhorn had taught him by those campfires years ago.

  He wore the string of ghost beads that Billy had given him last night, and he still wore the other necklace Billy had given him, the necklace with the silver charm with the lock of hair inside, his own hair from 1891.

  This ritual was both a repeat of the original ritual in the ghost town, but also different. David had incorporated some of the things Billy Nez had done in the saloon in Hope’s End. He held the eagle feather in his fingers, waving it back and forth in the air gently, like he was writing the symbols of the ancient language on the air.

  As he chanted, he felt the energy inside of him. He pictured that energy as a ball of spinning electricity inside his body, a power trying to escape from him. The dry air around him felt charged with particles now. He felt the fine hairs on his skin standing up—this was the same feeling he got when the Ancient Enemy was near.

  He remembered the words Joe Blackhorn had written in the letter: The items in this box may help you re-create the same ritual inside this circle of protection. It may help, but you don’t really need the things inside the box—those are just talismans and they only hold the power you give to them. The power is inside of you and it has always been there.

  And now David felt that power. He was truly summoning it on his own. Before today he had always needed to be scared for his power to surface, scared of losing loved ones and friends. But he wasn’t scared now—he was angry. And maybe that anger was fueling his power as much as his fear had before. He saw his parents in his mind, his memories of them before the Ancient Enemy had taken their bodies over and made them tear each other’s faces off. He saw his Aunt Awenita’s dead body on the floor of Captain Begay’s man-cave. He saw Cole and Stella, held captive and used as bait. He saw so many others, so many who had been used by the Ancient Enemy to get to him; some of those people had been guilty, but so many others had been innocent.

  It will end here. One way or another, all of this will end tonight.

  David opened his eyes. He saw the black sphere in front of him, spinning and growing larger, hovering above the rocky floor of the pit, trapped in this ancient mass grave, trapped even more by the circle of rocks surrounding the pit. The air around the sphere crackled with energy, small bolts of lightning shooting off of it as if it were a Tesla coil. It looked like a spinning black sphere, but now it also looked like a hole in the air, a hole that was pulling him towards it.

  It was a doorway, and it was growing larger and larger, big enough for David to step through now. There was nothing but the blackest of darkness beyond the doorway. But David knew there was a world beyond that darkness, a world he had been to before, a world he had escaped from to be here now.

  With the eagle feather still in one hand, David stepped through the spinning vortex and into the Void.

  CHAPTER 49

  Palmer

  Bone Canyon

  Palmer sat by the fire he’d built on the sand. He’d dug a small pit and surrounded it with rocks earlier while he still had enough daylight to see. He had scrounged for wood, breaking up the small, dry brush and piling it up a few feet away from his campfire. He had used a little bit of the gasoline he’d brought in the five-gallon plastic containers to get the fire going, and to keep it going if he needed to. He would need the rest of that gasoline later in the night—he was sure of that. He hoped he had enough wood and brush to last him through the night because he didn’t want to go looking for more in the desert when the darkness came.

  He sat on a blanket that he’d gotten from the backseat of Begay’s truck. He had his jug of water on the blanket and the flashlight he’d bought at the gas station. He had the gun Angie had given to him along with the extra magazine. And he had Cole’s 9mm. He was as prepared as he could be for whatever was going to happen tonight. He even had the crucifix on his necklace tucked down inside his shirt. His mother had given the necklace to him—it had been his grandfather’s necklace. Maybe the crucifix would help him when the evil finally came. Maybe it would keep him safe. It couldn’t hurt.

  Now all he could do was sit here and wait. Night was almost here, the last of the daylight was fading over the mountains, the purple sky giving way to the black night sky. The mountains were still a jagged line silhouetted along the horizon. David was down in the pit now. David had told him that he needed to be alone down there when he summoned the doorway. And that was okay with Palmer because he didn’t want to be near that doorway when it was opened again. The moon was rising in the east and it was nearly full. He hoped the full moon would give him some light to see by, but the flickering light of the campfire made the world beyond the fire even darker.

  What if this doesn’t work? What if David can’t open the door to the other world, the Void as he called it? What if he can’t get the ritual right? What if his powers aren’t strong enough to stop or even kill the Ancient Enemy?

  It will end here. One way or another, all of this will end tonight.

  Where had that thought come from? Palmer wasn’t sure. It almost felt like someone else’s voice had just whispered in his mind, a voice both familiar and alien at the same time.

  He watched the pit in the distance from beside the fire. The fire was making everything else around him darker, and now he could just make out the line of white rocks that made up part of the medicine wheel’s circle. It felt surreal sitting here in the middle of a place called Bone Canyon while a fifteen-year-old boy tried to summon a doorway to another world. This felt like a dream. Like a nightmare. Part of his mind tried to convince himself that what he’d seen in the ghost town had never happened, that it had been some kind of hallucination brought on by the venom of the rattlesnakes when they had bitten him. But he knew it was true, he knew it had happened. And he knew the demon they called the Ancient Enemy was real, and it was close.

  It had been deathly quiet for a while now; the only sound was the crackling fire. But then the wind picked up suddenly, and a moment later a bluish light danced along the top of the pit, the light reflecting off of the rocks of the medicine wheel. The light looked almost like the flickering light from a television set in a dark room. Something was happening down there.

  Palmer stood up and walked away from the campfire. He had his gun in one hand and the flashlight in his other hand; he couldn’t really remember grabbing them. He was a few steps beyond the fire now, out in the darkness, watching the blue lights dance along the rim of the pit, spreading out into the desert.

  Somewhere a coyote yipped

  Another coyote answered the first one; this coyote was much closer.

  “Oh God,” Palmer whispered as he stared at the lightshow dancing along the rocks and dirt. It was really happening; David was doing somethin
g down there. Palmer wasn’t sure if he should go over to the pit and look down, see if David needed any help. But what could he do to help David? Instead, he stood right where he was on the sand, the campfire behind him, the small airplane a black shadow in the night.

  The wind was picking up even more now. Sand was swirling around the protective circle of rocks, whipping around the edges of the pit. The blue lights were more intense now, and there was a rushing noise, like a train coming.

  And then it was over in the blink of an eye. The wind had died down. The lights were gone. Everything was quiet and still again.

  Palmer stood there for a long moment as another coyote yipped. It sounded like the coyotes were talking to each other out there, making their plans to attack as an army. He felt the urge to get back to the campfire and the safety of the firelight. He had built the campfire in front of the rise of a rock hill, something to protect his back and reflect the firelight. He had parked the truck at the other side of the fire. Even though the truck wasn’t a rock wall, it still felt somewhat like a wall of protection. Now he was leaving the fort he had built, that meager place of protection. But he had to look down into the pit. He had to know for sure that it had worked.

  He used the flashlight beam to guide his way to the edge of the circle. Now that he was fifteen yards away from the campfire, he could see better out here in the darkness. The moon had risen in the sky and even the scattering of stars helped provide some light. But he still needed the flashlight.

  He stepped over the line of large rocks and inside the medicine wheel. The edge of the pit was only another fifteen feet away. He could see the poles of the wood ladder sticking up just above the edge of the pit. He walked towards the ladder carefully, not wanting to stumble and fall over the edge.

  When he was at the edge, he shined his light down into the bottom of the pit.

  David wasn’t there. The pit was empty. On the stack of rocks there was the wooden box that David had gotten out of Joe Blackhorn’s hogan—the only sign that David had ever been there. Palmer shined the flashlight beam around the walls of the pit, the light picking up objects sticking out of the dirt sections of the wall. He trained his light on one area, staring at it for a long moment.

  Bones. There were human bones sticking out of the dirt. They hadn’t been there before when he had stood at the edge of the pit with David.

  He panned the light a little to the right and saw the face of a grinning skull partially exposed from the dirt wall. And there were more skulls, more bones. The bones weren’t white, but brown with age.

  A rattlesnake rattled close by, and then another one.

  Palmer whipped his flashlight beam out towards the desert beyond the circle of rocks, trying to spot the snakes in the darkness, trying to keep his balance at the edge of the pit.

  The desert creatures were coming now.

  Palmer hurried back across the desert floor to his campfire and Begay’s pickup truck. The wind had picked up again, gusting through this wide valley, the Darkwind blowing through the night and bringing its evil with it. When he got within a few feet of the fire, Palmer heard something from the pickup truck, a skittering along metal. He shined his flashlight beam at the truck and saw dozens of tarantulas and scorpions crawling all over the side of the truck.

  It was here now.

  More coyotes yipped and rattlesnakes rattled. They were still far off, but getting closer. Palmer even heard the sound of a mountain lion, a low warning growl from the big cat.

  But what scared him the most was the shuffling and shifting sound coming from the pit, like those bones were moving around inside the walls of that pit, pulling themselves out of the dirt and assembling into skeletons.

  The campfire was getting low and Palmer added a few more branches and twigs to it. He had the cans of gasoline close so they would be ready when he needed them. When the snakes and spiders got too close, he would create his own protective circle of fire to keep them back.

  I’m going to die out here tonight.

  If that happened then he was glad he had been able to talk to his daughter one last time earlier when he had called her from the gas station. He was happy he had told her he loved her one last time. He was happy she was doing well with a career and a family of her own. He was proud of his own career in the FBI, and he was proud that he had stopped a killer this morning. He hadn’t gotten there in time to save Billy Nez or David’s aunt, but at least he had helped Captain Begay and his wife, and David. He was happy he had gone the last seven years without a drop of liquor. Yes, he’d led a pretty good life and if tonight was his last night on Earth, then he was satisfied with that.

  There were more scuffling noises coming from the pit. Palmer could imagine the skeletons standing up, flesh growing on their bones.

  Another coyote yipped in the night, answered by another one. They were even closer now. Palmer remembered the animals at the church, the spiders spilling out of the woman’s face, the birds pecking at the windows and getting inside the church, the coyotes standing guard outside. And of course the rattlesnakes.

  He picked up one of the plastic cans of gasoline and poured the gas in a line around him and the campfire. He’d found a large branch earlier, it was about three feet long. He used an extra T-shirt from Begay’s pickup truck, tearing the shirt into strips. He wound one of the strips around the end of the branch, tying it there. He lit the end of the branch and touched it down to the line of gas. The flames whooshed up, creating a ring of fire all around him. In that light he saw the rattlesnakes coiling back, the tarantulas and scorpions skittering back along the sand. The fire would hold them off, but for how long? How long before David defeated this demon (if that was even going to happen)? How long before David was back?

  Palmer still had his burning branch in one hand and he had Begay’s gun in the other. He aimed the gun at the rattlesnake closest to the ring of fire, the one venturing the closest despite the heat. He pulled the trigger and the snake’s head blew away in a spray of blood, the body coiling around and around violently.

  “Come on, you son-of-a-bitch!” Palmer yelled at the night beyond the fire. “I’m ready to die.”

  Any day is a good day for a warrior to die. Again, he didn’t know where that phrase had come from and how it had popped into his mind, but it was there, and it gave him an odd sense of comfort.

  Yes, if he had to die tonight, then so be it. But he was going to go out fighting.

  CHAPTER 50

  Begay

  Hospital – New Mexico

  Angie pushed Begay in the wheelchair all the way to their car. The parking lot wasn’t even half full, and there wasn’t anyone else wandering around out here under the streetlights. Angie helped Begay out of the wheelchair, trying to guide him to the passenger door of the car.

  “I got it,” Begay told her. “Go ahead and get the car started.”

  Angie darted around to the driver’s side as Begay opened the passenger door and sank down hard into the seat, trying to keep his leg as straight as he could. His knee was screaming now and his head was throbbing worse than ever. But he managed to get in the car and close the door.

  “I don’t see anything out there,” Begay said, already out of breath, as Angie got in the car. “I think we’re good for now.”

  Angie started the car. She glanced at him and then looked out the windshield. Begay had seen that same look of shock before on a rookie’s face when he had seen his first murder or suicide victim. He’d seen that same look on an officer who’d been shot and was fighting for his life. It was a look of pure shock, like nothing could be trusted as real anymore. And he didn’t like seeing that expression on his wife’s face.

  Angie gripped the steering wheel hard as she pulled out of the well-lit parking lot and onto the road, the darkness taking over now.

  “Where are we going?” Angie asked even though she was already speeding down the road.

  “Home,” Begay said, but then he wondered if they should go somewhere els
e. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed Agent Palmer’s number from his contact list. It went right to voicemail. “Agent Palmer, this is Begay. Call me back when you get this.”

  Begay tried David’s phone but it did the same thing Palmer’s had, going right to voicemail. He left a message there too.

  “It’s a good thing we got out of that hospital when we did,” Begay said after setting his cell phone down in the center console. “You wanted me to stay, remember?”

  “The doctors wanted you to stay the night,” she corrected.

  “Still, it’s a good thing we left.”

  “You’re not trying to take credit for that right now, are you?”

  Begay shrugged.

  Angie tried to hide her smile. She was still tense, still white-knuckling the steering wheel, but she was beginning to relax just a little. He was doing his best to joke with her and set her at ease a little.

  “What are we going to do now?” Angie asked, all business again.

  “I don’t know. We should go back home.”

  “It will come for us there.”

  Begay could see that home was never going to be the same for Angie; it would always be tainted by the monster and the people who had died there, always tainted by the evil that had come knocking at their door.

  “We could just drive around for a while,” Angie suggested. “Just stay on the move.”

  “How much gas do you have?”

  “Almost half a tank,” she said. They were passing the edge of town now, getting out into the desert where they wouldn’t see another building for miles.

  “We should go home first,” Begay said. “I’ll get my shotgun. The feds didn’t take that. I’ve got another handgun there we could use.”

  Angie shook her head. “I gave that one to Agent Palmer because the feds took his gun.”