The Thirteenth Skull

by Bonnie Ramthun

  “Rene Dubois,” Joe said, in the tones of judge handing down a sentence. His hand was ice cold in Eileen’s. “He waited too long.”

  “It’s Dubois,” Lucy said in a high, furious voice. She sounded like the eagles that had circled the Tower that morning, voicing their unearthly cries. “He’s trapped.”

  “That’s the man who set the fire,” Ted said in explanation to the Lakota and the climber. “I hope he lives. I want to kill him myself.”

  “Can we drop a rope to him, and pull him up?” Joe said suddenly. Eileen looked over at the climber. She spread her arms wide. She had no rope; she’d left it below, to lighten the load.

  “No emergency rope up here? No stash of extras, food and water and rope?” Joe asked. “Nothing?”

  “We leave it as we found it,” the climber said with a sideways glance at the Lakota. She shook her braid over her shoulder and shrugged. “We don’t even pick the flowers. Besides, it’s an hour and a half down the side of the Tower, with the best of climbers. You need to fix and rappel three different times. There’s not a rope in the world that could go over a thousand feet and not break.”

  “Okay,” Joe said. His shoulders slumped.

  “He’s almost at the rock fall,” Eileen said. “The fire is burning the Visitors Center. It won’t be long now.”

  The old chief said something else in his native language. Eileen turned away from the struggling fat man who was racing the fire to the rock fall. The old chief was pointing, and he wasn’t pointing over the edge at Rene Dubois.

  “Behold the spirit,” the younger Lakota translated. “It comes.”

  Eileen looked, and her breath stopped. The fire burning from the northeast, the one that was whipping the Visitors Center into ashes, had met the other fire burning from the southwest. Something about the air currents, Eileen thought numbly. Something about the air currents was causing this.

  An enormous tornado of fire was building in front of them. It was growing from the two fires and it was higher than the Tower.

  “A fire whirl,” the climber said, and Eileen could see in her face the same dumb wonder and fear that must be in her own. “A fire whirl.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Keyhole Reservoir, Pine Haven, Wyoming

  “Holy smoke, look at that,” Dennis Patterson said. He held his hands to his face like a little boy who was watching a scary movie. He looked through his split fingers.

  “Please,” Paul said, looking at the tornado of fire that they could see clearly from twenty miles away. His face was still wet from the water falling from the belly of the helicopter’s water bladder. The pilots had taken the Huey directly overhead as they flew off towards the Tower. They’d gotten lost in the smoke and the haze almost immediately. Now there was only time to hope and pray.

  Don, the park ranger, had contacted his ranger partner Larry. Larry, in turn, had gotten hold of Doug at his home in Sundance. Doug was on his way to pick them up, and within an hour or so Paul would see his wife. He didn’t know if he could look her in the eye, ever again. He would give his life before he’d let their daughter be hurt, and now he was safe and sound and she was in the gravest danger. He didn’t know how he was going to find a way to live with himself, if those young people died and he lived. He didn’t know if he wanted to live anymore, if Eileen died.

  “Can you see the helicopter?” Dennis said.

  “I can’t,” Paul said.

  “I should have been up there,” Don the Park Ranger said, in a self-loathing way that Paul understood all too well.

  “There’s nothing you could do—” Paul started, and Don cut him off.

  “I have flares,” he snapped. “If the smoke is too bad up there, how are the pilots going to know where to put the water? If they don’t have any flares, how are the pilots going to see them?”

  There was a silence that seemed long, but really wasn’t. It was only seconds now until the tornado of fire swept over the very peak of the Tower.

  “Eileen,” Paul said in a voice that sounded like a fading radio station, lost in a roar of static. He sank to his knees, hearing the static grow louder and louder in his ears, and fainted for the first and last time in his life.

  Top of Devils Tower, Wyoming

  “We need a fire shelter,” the girl climber said hurriedly. “Quick, everybody to the center. It’s going to come right over us.”

  “We don’t have anything like that,” Eileen said. “No one even has coats.”

  “You have us,” Joe said.

  The tornado was growing with a sound that was unspeakably terrible. It sounded like a thousand people talking and chewing busily on sticks and bones at the same time. Happy, insane people, or demons. Or maybe one demon. Eileen tried to clear her head but she couldn’t seem to think.

  “Last time counts for all,” Nolan said to Jorie. They were huddling closer now at the very center of the Tower, and the men were pushing the women to the center as though they’d been rehearsing this idea for weeks.

  “No,” Eileen said.

  “Yes,” Joe said to her, and his eyes were kind, and implacable. “Huddle down, close to the ground. We’ll cover you with our bodies. If the fire reaches us, it’ll get to us and not to you. Best shot we have.”

  “I—” Eileen said. She thought of making love to Joe in the Mustang, how sweet and perfect that moment was, and that it was their last. She remembered her mother’s sad and grim look, when her mother told Lucy and Eileen and Jorie that they didn’t know what men were for. She understood with a completeness that felt like drowning that her mother was right. She’d never known before now.

  Joe was going to die for her, to give her a chance to stay alive. And she had to let him do it. She had time for one kiss, quick and imperfect, and then she turned and knelt and put her face in the dirt.

  “I love you,” Ted said to Lucy, and the worst part of it was that all barriers were down now. There were so many things they could talk about, so many things to catch up on, and there would be no time. Lucy took his face in her hands and she burst into tears as she felt his bristly beard. His hair was uncombed and his eyes were red and ringed with tiredness and smoke, but his smile was as sweet and tender as the day they married.

  “I love you, too,” she said, but no sound came out.

  “Tell Hank I love him,” Ted said. “Now kneel down, Lucy. Live.”

  “Maybe we could have made it, you and I,” Nolan said to Jorie.

  “I won’t let you do this,” Jorie said. Her face was dirty and her eyes were red and swollen. She was more beautiful than cool water.

  “I can’t live for you, now,” Nolan said with his best wry grin. “But I can die for you.”

  Jorie put her hands over his. He kissed her and she met her mouth with his, as though it was the first time she’d kissed anyone, ever.

  “Kneel, Jorie,” Nolan whispered. “Turn around and kneel. We don’t have any more time.”

  She put her hands to her face and she turned away from him and she knelt. The Lakota girl huddled close to her side and Lucy was curled up to her left. Nolan opened his shirt, losing all the buttons in the process, but he didn’t give much of a damn, at this point. If he was burned and he could still walk, he promised himself he’d take the thousand foot drop. Better that than three or four days in a hospital, stinking and drowning in his own cast off fluids, his flesh hanging off in flaps. Better to go on his own terms.

  The chewing and snapping sound was approaching at a run, at a hungry sprint, as though it sensed the fresh unburnt meat.

  “Helicopter,” Eileen said to the dirt in front of her lips. “Helicopter. Water bag. I hear the helicopter.”

  She could hear it through the Tower itself, oddly enough, as though the vibrations in the air were being transmitted to the stone. She realized what the pilots were attempting to do. She realized, as Don had done only seconds before, that there was only one chance for the helicopter to save them, and the water bag wasn’t big enough to cover
the whole top of the Tower.

  They needed a flare, and they didn’t have one. Eileen turned off everything outside of her. The clean room where she worked on her murder puzzles was empty, but there was something there, wasn’t there? Something she was missing.

  She had it! Eileen pushed Lucy roughly aside as she struggled out of her backpack strap. The men were closing in on them, shirts held wide, sheltering them with their bodies, and Eileen had no time to explain. She unsnapped the straps and reached into her backpack.

  The sound of the helicopter thudded into her ears and the sound of the demon tornado roared as though it knew what she was going to do.

  She pulled the crystal skull from her pack and she rose to her knees. She held it into the air with both hands, held it above the heads and arms of the sheltering men, held it like an Aztec priestess before a sacrifice.

  The skull caught the fire and prismed into a thousand gorgeous colors, as radiant and scintillating as a diamond, as bright as a torch. Eileen realized she was screaming. Joe was trying to push her down, and then the helicopter came out of the smoke like a hawk stooping to the kill.

  Joe, struggling to push Eileen’s head and shoulders back down to the ground, never saw the helicopter and the hero pilots who saved them. He saw the skull itself, sparkling and glowing with unearthly light, and beyond that the fire tornado spewing a gout of flame across the Tower like a tongue meant to eat them all. The water, released from the helicopter’s water bag, landed three feet in front of them. Joe saw icy blue and sparkling clear crystal grow magically from nowhere, a wall in front of them. There was no time to blink, or draw a breath. Joe saw the flame draw back to the demon’s mouth as though it had been burned by cold, not heat. The tornado flew apart in an instant and Joe saw the tornado’s face, a snarling were-flame, as it collapsed and went back into the evil earth.

  Then time began again. The Huey went over them so closely Joe felt the air from the blades thudding against his skin. Eileen’s arm wobbled and he reached forward and steadied the skull in her hands. She fell backwards into him and he fell down, breaking the circle that wasn’t needed any more.

  The helicopter circled once and Joe looked up. He saw the grinning faces of the pilots. The copilot was waving and giving them the thumbs-up. Then he tapped his watch and made a circle with his finger and thumb.

  “They need to refuel,” Eileen said from his lap, looking up. “They’ll be back to pick us up after they refuel.”

  “Look at the fire,” Lucy said wonderingly. They were still huddled as closely as frightened puppies, but everyone was looking around now.

  Joe saw that the two onrushing walls of flame had burned into each other. As the two walls had met they’d created the fire tornado, but the fire quickly burned all the fuel. Without anything more to burn – and cheated out of burning them, Joe thought – the fire was collapsing into smoke and embers. The danger was over.

  “Did you see it?” the Lakota girl said. She looked around at all of them, and Joe thought they all looked the same. Perhaps they would always look the same, forever, as though what they’d just been through had burned an invisible mark into them.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the climber girl said, but she looked away nervously.

  They’d all looked at the fire tornado, Joe realized. It was in none of their natures to look away from death. They’d all seen – something.

  The helicopter thudded away and the fire burned down, and the silence was as loud as a song sung by a choir of a hundred throats, a thrumming of life and joy that Joe could hardly bear. He tightened his arms around Eileen and kissed the top of her head.

  The elderly chief looked at Joe, his gaze clear and birdlike. He looked at Eileen, and then at the skull in her lap.

  “Tell him,” Eileen said solemnly, “that this is a crystal skull, brought from the Aztecs to your people, for safekeeping. It was lost, and has been found.”

  The young Lakota repeated her words in their soft language, and the old chief widened his eyes and put his hands to his chest. He bowed his head and when he lifted him there were tears in his eyes.

  “Here,” Eileen said, and handed the skull to him. He took it carefully, holding the skull so the face looked directly into his own. He spoke, and the younger Lakota translated for him.

  “We have legends, some of which you may have heard. The white buffalo. The big wave. We also have a legend of a skull, a magic skull, a skull sent to us, to be guarded and kept until the proper day. Is there anyone among us, now, who will deny we walk the right path?”

  “What’s the right path?” Lucy asked the young man. She was sitting in front of her husband, who had his arms around her.

  “My grandfather and my brothers and sister, here, are part of a movement to restore the tribal nations,” the man said crisply, his voice flawless and educated. “We drink no alcohol, we take no drugs, and we accept no government checks. We believe they’re tainted like the Cavalry once tainted blankets with smallpox. Our movement is small, but we have the right path.”

  “The path back,” Eileen said.

  “We don’t wish to go back to the past, but we do wish to free ourselves from a path that was forced upon us. This gift you bring us, at last, may help us show our people the right path.” The young Lakota grinned at them and shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever works, right?”

  “Please,” Jorie said. “I don’t want to interfere. But the skull is part of an archeological dig, and I was hoping –”

  She looked around, and Joe waited for the haughty, poisonous Jorie to re-assert itself, now that they were safe. He waited for her to tell the Lakota that the crystal skull which had quite obviously been on its way to them was actually property of the United States government, where it would sit in a cardboard box and be studied by graduate students. He thought that Bob, if he had a brain, would much rather sit around a campfire and be sung to than stashed in a box on a shelf and forgotten.

  “Well,” Jorie said, looking down at her hands. “I was hoping you would let me come and photograph him, and study him. Wherever you decide to keep him.”

  Lucy, who was sitting by Jorie, threw her arms wide. She moved out of Ted’s embrace and wrapped the other girl in an enormous hug. She hugged her so hard that the two women fell over, Lucy laughing and kissing Jorie on the cheek with enormous smacks.

  “Hooray for Jorie!” she said, and kissed her again. Jorie looked like she was going to burst into tears, but she broke into a watery smile instead.

  “Oh stop it, already,” she said irritably, but she was still smiling.

  “What a day,” Joe said, as Lucy let Jorie go and allowed Ted to put his arms around her and hug her tight.

  The old chief said something to the younger man, and the pretty Lakota girl produced a patterned shawl from her carry sack. The elder took the skull from Eileen and wrapped it carefully, speaking to the younger Lakota as he did so.

  “We shouldn’t let the skull be unwrapped until we’re well away from here,” the young man translated for them. He glanced over the Tower where the tornado of fire had built and stood, and Joe saw everyone nodding their heads.

  “Good idea,” Nolan said. “Really good idea.”

  “We’d be honored to let you study our skull,” the young man said to Jorie. “We’d also be honored if you would speak of where you found it, and how you knew to bring it to us.”

  “We didn’t—” Jorie started, but Eileen broke in smoothly.

  “We’d be happy to show you everything, once Jorie has the site safe for visitors,” she said. Then she bit her lip and looked north, where the smoke from embers still rose into the air. “If there’s anything left, that is.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Joe said. “Best of all, everyone else is safe. It looks like the fire has burned itself out.”

  “Hank,” Lucy said. “I hope he’s not too scared.”

  “He’s fine, I’m sure,” Joe said. “And now that we’re – hey, wait.”<
br />
  “Rene Dubois,” Eileen said, as though she’d forgotten, Well, they all had. There had been more important things on their minds than the fate of one nasty serial killer.

  “Better not get close to the edge,” the climber warned. “He went into the rock fall, and you can’t see it from here.”

  “They’re sure going to need a new Visitors Center,” Nolan observed, looking at the ash pit, still smoking, that had been a building.

  “And a new car,” the climber sighed, looking at the burnt hulk that had been their Subaru. “At least we’re still alive.”

  “At least?” Lucy said, and then saw the girl’s smile.

  “So where’s our ride?” Ted asked. “I’m starving. Is anybody else starving?”

  “Food,” Nolan said hungrily. Joe put his hand to his belly, which hadn’t even seen a whole breakfast, and suddenly he was ravenous with hunger.

  “Oh, my God,” Eileen said. “Don’t talk about food!”

  “Taxi!” Nolan said, and whistled like a New Yorker hailing a cab. “Taxi!”

  This should have been a mild joke, but it struck Joe as the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He started laughing so hard he fell backward, holding his stomach, and Eileen fell next to him on the ground, laughing so hard tears were coming from her eyes and streaking her dirty, beautiful face.

  That’s the way the helicopter finally found them, eleven people lying on the ground and laughing deliciously, even the oldest one who chuckled and chuckled, holding a wrapped bundle in his lap.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Visitors Center, Devils Tower, Wyoming

  “The gasoline from these three cars must have been the cause of that tremendous fire spout we saw,” the park ranger, Don, said. He stood next to a burned out car, the one that Rene Dubois had left in the parking lot. The other two twisted wrecks were once a blue Subaru and a green truck. The air was choking with ash and smoke and Eileen could feel the baking hot asphalt through the soles of her thick hiking boots.