Evil Spirits

by Mark Lukens

  Begay nodded. “Well, I’ve got a rifle there.”

  Angie still didn’t look too sure about going home.

  “I need some kind of weapons,” Begay explained. “I need something to protect us with.”

  Angie still didn’t say anything. She drove along the two-lane road into the desert.

  “The FBI might still be there,” Begay said. “The police.”

  She gave him a hopeful look, and he thought it might be enough to convince her. She needed to take a left up at the next road, which would lead to Iron Springs. But that road would be the most desolate part of their journey home.

  “You need to turn up here,” Begay reminded her.

  Angie finally nodded and turned left onto the road. The canyons and hills stood in the distance like dark giants.

  They drove along in silence for a while.

  “We’re okay,” Begay told her. “We’ll be okay.”

  “You still want to go find Palmer, don’t you?”

  “I want to find out where they are,” he answered. “See if they’re still alive.”

  Angie was about to say something, but her words were choked off when their car made a clunking noise. The headlights and all of the lights on the dashboard went out.

  “What’s wrong?” Begay asked.

  “I don’t know,” Angie said. “Everything just died.”

  Begay turned around in his seat and looked out the rear window; sharp pains shot from his neck up into his head and down into his back. He didn’t see any cars on the road behind them. “Just pull over,” he told her. “Shift into neutral.”

  Angie shifted into neutral as she steered the car towards the side of the road.

  “Try to start it again while it’s still rolling,” he told her.

  She twisted the key in the ignition.

  Nothing.

  She twisted the key again and again until they rolled to a stop on the sand at the side of the road, pebbles and sand crunching under their tires.

  “Put it in park and try to start it again,” Begay told her, trying to keep his voice calm, trying not to panic Angie any more than she already was.

  Angie shifted into park and twisted the key. The car wouldn’t start.

  “I’ll call someone,” Angie said. She tried Begay’s phone and then her own. “No signal,” she said, trying her phone again. She looked at him. “We should still get cell phone reception out here.”

  “I know,” Begay said. He turned around and looked out the rear window again, trying to ignore the pain in his head and neck. There were no headlights in either direction on the road, no one coming. This was such a remote area and it could be an hour before they saw another vehicle.

  Begay realized now that they shouldn’t have tried to go home. They should have stayed in town. But what good would that have done? If the Ancient Enemy wanted to get them out here or in town, then it would. David wasn’t here to protect them now like he had at the house.

  The wind picked up, blowing hard suddenly, rocking their car just a bit.

  Angie stared at Begay. “That thing did this, didn’t it?” She watched him like she was searching his eyes for the truth. “It made the car die. It made the cell phones die.”

  Begay didn’t answer. He didn’t really think he had to.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered.

  Begay took her hand into his, giving it a gentle squeeze like she had done to him earlier in the hospital room. He looked back out the rear window of their car.

  “Why do you keep looking back there?” Angie asked. She yanked her hand out of his and turned around, her eyes widening with shock. “How . . . how can that be possible?”

  Awenita was walking up the road towards their car, her naked body still wrapped in plastic, her skin pale, her throat a gaping wound that looked black in the moonlight. The wind was blowing her dark hair around, some of the loose pieces of plastic whipping around her.

  “I want you to go,” Begay told Angie. “Run. I can’t run. Even if my knee wasn’t sprained, I couldn’t run very far.”

  “No. I’m not leaving you.”

  “I’ll fight her off,” Begay said. He didn’t think he would be able to do that for long, but he would try. He didn’t know what else to do. At least Angie would have a chance. If she stayed in this car, she wouldn’t have a chance at all. “Please, Angie. A truck might come by. You could wave it down.”

  “No.”

  “Angie . . .”

  “I said no,” she snapped.

  Awenita was at the rear of their car. Then she was walking past Angie’s window to the front of the car. She stood there at the front, staring at them, her hair flying around in the wind, the plastic around her body rattling and crackling. Something moved underneath the plastic and four black tentacles poked out from the plastic and her body, the ends of the tentacles tapered down to points, the skin of the tentacles shiny and slick with blood and fluids in the moonlight. Two of the tentacles slithered towards the sides of the car, their tapered ends fanning out into smaller offshoots of tentacles, like roots growing from a taproot, creating a web across the windows to the rear of the car. The other two tentacles slithered up the hood of the car to the windshield. One of the tentacles continued up onto the roof, but the other one reared back like a cobra, poking at the glass of the windshield as if it was testing the strength of it.

  How big was that thing inside of Awenita? It didn’t even seem to make any sense. The thing seemed to keep growing from itself, like a tree from a seed.

  The tentacle tapped at the windshield again, harder this time.

  Angie grabbed Begay’s arm, pulling him to her. She had tears in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  She shook her head no. “I love you,” she told him.

  “I love you,” Begay said, holding her, waiting for their death to come.

  CHAPTER 51

  David

  The Void

  David was in the Void now. Everything was a contrast here, a collision of opposites. The place felt limitless, an unending sea of grayness. Yet it also felt claustrophobic, like the mist was pushing down on him, the walls of fog closing in all around him. It felt like he’d been here before, but he also couldn’t remember ever being here; it felt foreign yet strangely like home. The memory of dual lives floated around in his mind—his memory here and his memory back in Hope’s End. And now there were memories of other lives, distant lives.

  He needed to concentrate—he was here to save Stella and Cole. But he was also here to stop the Ancient Enemy. Could he kill it? He wasn’t sure. Could he even harm it here in its own world? He wasn’t sure about that, either. Joe Blackhorn seemed to think he could defeat the Ancient Enemy, so he would just have to use the confidence his former teacher had in him.

  There didn’t seem to be an immediate threat near him now, yet the Ancient Enemy seemed to be all around him. The hairs were standing up on his skin and he felt the electricity buzzing in the air all around him, like static electricity on a dry but stormy day. Every atom around him seemed to be vibrating here, and it seemed like he could hear the frequency, like it was a language he could understand. The world here was malleable, controllable, solid matter could be formed from the mist all around him.

  Stella and Cole were here somewhere. They could be a mile away or a million miles away. But distance didn’t matter in this world, and neither did time; none of that existed here in this ever-changing yet never-changing world.

  David closed his eyes and concentrated on Stella, listening to her frequency. He held the eagle feather in one hand and touched the ghost beads hanging around his neck with his other hand, and then he touched the silver charm on the necklace. The symbols drawn on his hands were glowing now; he didn’t need to look at them, he could feel the warmth on his skin, the power inside of him. The necklace and the feather might just be talismans, objects with no power as Joe Blackhorn had said in his letter, but David felt like he was drawing even more powe
r and energy from them.

  “Stella,” David whispered, calling out to her.

  She was close, but he couldn’t hear her yet.

  “Stella,” he whispered again, a little louder this time.

  She screamed from the mist.

  David focused on her scream. He opened his eyes and . . .

  . . . he was beside her and Cole now, like he had teleported there. They were surrounded by the dead, ghosts summoned by the Ancient Enemy and solidified into life. David saw the bank robbers from the cabin in Colorado, including Trevor, Cole’s brother. He saw the archaeologists from the dig site, and Jim Whitefeather with his eyes gone. Tom Gordon’s eyes were gone, too; there were just two deep black holes in his frozen face, the ice on his skin and clothing crackling as he moved forward. He saw others from the Mountainside Inn, the salesman who had been crushed up but somehow still alive, the clerk from the front desk, his upper body twisted in a different direction from his lower half. He saw the tall, thin Swede from Hope’s End, his torso naked, his belly bloated as spiders wriggled around inside, his throat swollen with them. He saw the cowboy and Rose, the woman he had gone upstairs with at the saloon, their bodies twisted together like taffy. He saw the others from Hope’s End, the dead townspeople. And there were others he didn’t even recognize. So many of them. Hundreds of them.

  But his eyes settled on the man and the woman from the ghost town church, both of them still wearing his parents’ skinned faces. And then he saw his parents right behind them, their faces red masks of gore like chewed raw hamburger.

  That’s not them. That’s the Ancient Enemy.

  The dead were closing in fast, all of them rushing forward at the same time.

  David raised his hands up. Words came out of his mouth without his understanding what they were. Joe Blackhorn had tried to teach him the language of the ancients, but David had never learned much of it, but those words and phrases of power were pouring out of him now, the symbols Billy had drawn on his hands were glowing yellow, then orange, and then a deep red like magma from a volcano. He waved his hands back and forth in front of him like he was erasing a chalkboard, the eagle feather still clenched in his fingers. He spun around in a slow circle, erasing the dead that charged them. Their flesh was wiped away like the mist itself, disappearing like ash blown on the wind, leaving behind the skeletal remains of the Ancient Enemy inside of them. Each structure looked like a human sized and shaped tree with branches for the arms and legs, a network of thinner branches growing out from the bigger ones like a network of vines.

  Exposed now, the skeletal membranes that had controlled each of the dead crumbled down to the ground like collapsing buildings, breaking up into smaller creatures that looked like beetles with no legs, scurrying away into the mist to regroup, to collect together again into a monstrous creature—the Ancient Enemy’s true form. Maybe not. Maybe David, Stella, and Cole would never be able to see the true Ancient Enemy; maybe their minds weren’t able to process it, just like this world was only what their own minds could project onto it.

  “David,” Stella breathed out. She hugged him.

  David hugged her, holding her for a moment.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when she pulled away. “We tried to run. We tried to get up here to help you, but it took us into a doorway, into the Void. It used us as bait to get you here.”

  “I had to come,” David told her. “I never had a choice. If I don’t stop it now . . .”

  Stella just nodded. David could tell that she understood what would happen if the Ancient Enemy won; she had seen in it in her mind, in her dreams. She had seen the tidal wave of death coming. And Cole had seen it, too.

  Crackling noises sounded from all around them in the mist. The Ancient Enemy was rebuilding. It was going to come at them again soon.

  But David knew something about the Ancient Enemy now; he knew that it was weaker. It had punched itself out in a way just now, like it had at Joe Blackhorn’s house when it had controlled all of those animals and the wind. Now it was regrouping, but taking its time, trying to recharge its power. It was also spread out in too many places. David saw now that it was trying to attack Agent Palmer, Captain Begay, and Angie. David knew he had to attack now, he couldn’t let the Ancient Enemy get its strength back.

  David stepped forward, raising his hands up in front of him. He still had the eagle feather in his fingers, and the symbols on his hands and arms glowed even brighter now. But there were more symbols on his flesh now, symbols that Billy Nez hadn’t drawn on his skin; these were new symbols, even more powerful ones creeping up his arms; they were all over his body now, heating it up. But David didn’t feel the pain; all he felt was the anger as the power grew inside of him, ready to blow like a faulty boiler.

  “This is for my aunt!” David yelled at the mist and the shadows moving around in it. “This is for my mom and dad!”

  David thrust his hands forward and strings of light shot out of him in every direction, shooting into the mist like a web, like threads of light that went on forever, wrapping around those shadows in the mist, wrapping around them like a net, holding them, heating them up, hurting them. He could hear the Ancient Enemy’s screams inside of his mind; he could feel its pain and its fear.

  The tentacles shot out from the mist, rushing towards David in one last effort to hurt him, but as they touched him, they withered and died. But they had hurt David; he had felt the pain. He knew he was injured, but he didn’t know how badly.

  “Die!” David yelled, still seeing his family in his mind, still seeing Stella and Cole and all of the others that this ancient being had tormented and killed.

  More tentacles shot out from the mist, striking him, hurting him.

  And then everything went black in David’s mind and he collapsed.

  CHAPTER 52

  Begay

  Western New Mexico

  Begay and Angie held onto each other inside of her car, waiting for the death they knew was coming.

  The tentacle poked at the windshield one more time, even harder this time, and then it reared back like a snake about to strike, about to punch through the windshield and into them.

  The tentacle froze. All of the tentacles froze. Even Awenita beyond the tentacles stood frozen in the night. The tentacle in front of them fell down onto the hood of their car with a thud, and then it began dissolving, turning to ash, blowing away into the wind. All of the tentacles were gone in seconds.

  Awenita’s dead body stood in front of their car for a moment, but with nothing inside of her to hold her up anymore, she collapsed onto the ground in front of their car, out of sight now.

  “What happened?” Angie asked.

  Begay shook his head, and he couldn’t help smiling. “I . . . I think it’s over.”

  “Over?”

  He looked at Angie. “I think David just defeated the Ancient Enemy. Wherever he is, I think he hurt it or drove it back again to its own world. Maybe he killed it.”

  Angie jumped when their car started on its own, the headlights turning on and shining into the darkness and down the edge of the lonely road.

  Begay picked up his cell phone, checking to see if he had service.

  Angie hugged him, crying harder now, holding him tight. She grabbed the shifter, ready to shift into reverse.

  “Wait,” Begay told her.

  Angie just stared at him.

  There was a signal on his phone, a weak one, but it was there. He dialed the number for the Navajo Tribal Police, a private number he knew well. “Someone needs to take Awenita’s body back to the hospital,” he told her. “We can’t leave her out here in the desert.”

  Angie nodded.

  Moments later, the arrangements were made. They would wait for the captain to get here. He tried Agent Palmer’s phone again, but he still wasn’t getting through.

  They’re going to be okay, Begay told himself. He looked at Angie. “We’re going to be okay.” He stroked her hair. “We’re all going to be okay.
”

  CHAPTER 53

  Palmer

  Bone Canyon

  Palmer had used up all of the bullets in Begay’s gun and the ones in Cole’s 9mm. He had used up all of the gas in both of the plastic cans. His campfire was getting low now, the pile of brush he had used for fuel almost gone. The pickup truck had tarantulas and scorpions all over the side of it. Coyotes yipped in the darkness, even closer now. There were at least two mountain lions out there. But the rattlesnakes, the creatures that Palmer feared the most, were now slithering towards him.

  He should have saved one of those bullets for himself. But he didn’t want to do that. David was somewhere else; he was fighting. And Palmer would fight too. He had his branch with the piece of cloth wrapped around it. He had stuck the end of the branch into the dying campfire, catching it on fire. It wasn’t much, but he would use it to fight off the snakes until there were too many of them.

  Five rattlesnakes were slithering towards him, two of them coiling up, ready to strike, the rattles on their tails going crazy. It was like the snakes knew he was out of gasoline and bullets.

  Of course they knew.

  As the snakes began to slither towards him, Palmer backed up towards the rock wall behind him. He was cornered, trapped. The snakes would be on him in seconds.

  But then the snakes stopped. All of them. The tarantulas and scorpion dropped off of the side of Begay’s pickup truck, skittering away into the desert. The snakes seemed to be confused, two of them turning around and slithering away. Palmer had seen the snakes act like this before in the church when David had driven the Ancient Enemy away.

  “David,” Palmer whispered.

  He stepped forward, waving the fire at the end of his stick at the last three rattlesnakes remaining. They reared back, afraid of the fire, crawling away quickly into the darkness. A few coyotes yipped, but they were farther away now.

  The animals were gone now. There were still a few spiders and scorpions, but they were crawling away.

  Palmer took a few steps away from the rock wall, closer to his dying fire. He picked up his flashlight and turned it on. He rushed past the campfire towards the medicine wheel and the burial pit inside of it. He got to the edge of the pit, shining the flashlight down into the pit. The stack of flat rocks was still there, and now there were human bones and skulls scattered everywhere along the floor of the pit.