The Sirens of Oak Creek

by Robert Louis DeMayo

  Thompson shrugged. “It’s all I got aside from the Colt pistol I’m leaving with Margaret.”

  Wilson spit on the ground and mumbled a curse. After casting an annoyed glance at young Frankie, he headed up the canyon to Indian Gardens with Thompson´s rifle over his shoulder.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  The sun was beating down relentlessly, as Howard hiked into the West Fork. He could make it to Itzel Canyon and up to the hidden canyon in less than two hours if he kept his head down, but in this heat with the sun directly overhead it would be slower going.

  This was the hottest day of the year, so far, and once again he wished he’d set out earlier. Mattie had stopped by again, unannounced, and he wondered if she suspected that he was up to something. Maybe it hadn’t been so smart building her a cabin less than a mile from his.

  He had wondered all night what he might need to explore the cave, and what he might find inside. He had prepared a pack with the journal, a lantern, stick matches, some rope, and some cloth and kerosene to make a torch if necessary.

  The vegetation along the trail slumped, and the snake-like canyon undulated with heat waves. He paused for a quick moment, took off his hat and wiped his brow, and looked around.

  Only a few shaded bends in the West Fork still held water. In one, he spied a ripple in a deep pool, caused by one of the few remaining trout. Had he been more relaxed he might have dunked his shaggy black mop of hair in the water to cool off.

  But despite the fact that his brain seemed to be baking, he was running late, so he re-seated his hat and stumbled ahead.

  He saw no deer or birds. They knew better than to move about when the sun was directly above.

  At the confluence of the West Fork and Itzel Canyon he came upon a bear track in the soft clay along what had been a pool of water.

  A good-sized bear, he thought. A grizz.

  He picked up his pace, loping his way up Itzel Canyon, and didn’t stop until he was in the hidden box canyon.

  Finally, he crouched before the cave entrance.

  The ingress to the cave was concealed by the burnt husks of several blackened juniper trunks. Branches and leaves had clustered on top of that, hiding the cave.

  Howard took off his hat and set it on the ground, then climbed through the debris and, stooping, entered the cave.

  The cave had a low ceiling, and water dripped from it into puddles on the floor. Several large Sinaguan pots had been placed to collect the drops, which echoed hollowly every few moments.

  A dank smell lingered in the cave, and Howard didn’t like it at all.

  To his left he noticed a dark recess. Enough light crept in through the doorway that he could make out a bear skull leaning against the wall. Above it a bear claw necklace hung from a peg.

  Otherwise the recess was empty.

  He glanced deeper into the main chamber. On a dry mound in the middle he noticed a collection of bowls and offerings beside an old basalt mano and metate.

  He inspected the items: a doll made from a piece of leather and a corn cob; a yellow drinking tube; several small bowls with colored powders; and another of small brown seeds.

  Beyond the mound, the chamber ceiling slanted down toward what Howard could make out to be a tunnel. He took off his pack and set it down, knowing suddenly he wouldn’t need the lantern as he stared into the tunnel.

  It glowed, dimly, with just enough light to see by.

  He crept closer and peered into the passageway.

  On the ground before him lay a pile of bones. They were tinted blue and covered with what appeared to be tiny mushrooms.

  The walls were of basalt and looked like they had been cut by hand, long ago, as a luminescent lichen had since taken root in the cracks. He touched it, and a glowing powder rubbed off on his fingertips.

  Howard stopped to collect his wits.

  He thought of the journal. Was there anything he had read that might help him now? The author related that he had been warned to stay away from the cave, but not why.

  Howard inched his way forward.

  He thought he heard whispers. His heart was racing.

  The dust on the floor glowed weakly.

  Soon he came upon a small room with a large slab of stone on the ground that had a hole in the middle.

  He peered at it but could make nothing definitive out of it in the murky jade darkness. He was about to take another step when he noticed a boot print in the soft dust ahead of him.

  He tried to check himself, but as he turned, someone moved behind him, and clubbed him unconscious.

  “You’re not as smart as you think you are,” said Wilson, when he noticed Howard was stirring. Bear Howard lay sprawled on the ground, his face in the glowing dust a few feet from the hole in the floor.

  Howard touched the back of his head and felt a thick, sticky liquid. He was bleeding, and a bit of blood had puddled in the dust. From the dark hole before him, he thought he could hear someone whispering.

  Wilson leaned over him, a sturdy wooden club in his hand. It was Aztec, and he admired a sharp ridge of embedded obsidian chips while slowly circling the man on the ground. He must have taken a fall, Howard thought as he glanced up at him, because his face was covered with the glowing powder, too.

  “You son of a bitch,” snarled Howard, weakly.

  “I just saved you,” continued Wilson. “If you’d taken one more step you would have triggered a trap.”

  He looked to the shadows by the wall where a wooden structure lay partially concealed.

  Wilson turned and stared down the tunnel, deeper into the cave. “Don’t know why I did it,” said Wilson. “You been keepin’ secrets!” he added. “Big ones!”

  Howard was barely conscious. His mind was spinning, he was uncertain of what was real, and what wasn’t.

  Wilson’s eyes were dilated and his expression jubilant. He wore Thompson’s small rifle over his shoulder and carried a compact leather backpack by the straps. Howard noticed it seemed to be filled with something heavy.

  He set it down, untied the top flap, and began running his hands through its contents.

  Howard groaned and tried to sit up. Wilson lifted a hand to show off several gold coins, letting them fall back into the pack one by one.

  Under the coins, the old bear hunter’s hands were red and blistering. “You really gonna tell me you didn’t know about what’s around the corner?” he asked with a truculent edge to his voice. “You weren’t going to share that?”

  Howard managed to shake his head.

  Wilson spat on the ground. “I reckon I don’t believe you.”

  Wilson shook his own head. “Well, you should’a shared it. Now it’s too late. Now I got no room for any of ya.”

  Howard still couldn’t speak, but he tried to stand up. The tunnel spun and stretched before his eyes when he tried to focus.

  Wilson crouched before him and snorted.

  “I don’t believe you’re gonna make it, Mr. Howard.”

  Then he stood up and brushed off his pants.

  “With this fortune I’m gonna buy up all of Oak Creek Canyon,” snickered Wilson. “With you gone, your family will clear outta here, and by the time Thompson returns from Prescott both his cabins will be burned to the ground.”

  Howard’s eyes lit up anxiously and Wilson chuckled.

  “Oh, I forgot how much you admire young Margaret,” said Wilson. “Maybe I’ll just shoot Jim when he comes back and take her as my own wife. She’ll be more receptive with this fortune behind me.”

  Howard could take no more, and once more tried to get to his feet. But his eyes lost focus, and he collapsed to the ground next to a crack in the slab through which his blood was seeping toward the hole in the floor.

  Wilson laughed. “Good. Save me from havin’ to kill ya.”

  He shouldered his small pack and headed down the tunnel, toward the box canyon.

  I stood by the door to Pa’s cabin on the West Fork. Earlier in the day, I’d visited, and fe
lt certain he was up to something. He’d been in the middle of packing when I showed up, but then denied having any plans.

  But clearly, he did. He’d been gone for hours now.

  So, I decided to find out for myself.

  Margaret showed up at my cabin earlier, asking if she might stay the night with her two young’ns. I told her I had to do something and asked her to watch my children as well—which thankfully she obliged to.

  Jesse and Stephen were building a still in a cave they’d discovered a mile downstream. I knew I might not see either of them for a few days—and then they’d be all hung over—so I was on my own.

  It wasn’t tough to figure where Pa had been going. A trail out the back door led straight into the West Fork, and clear as day his fresh tracks aimed that way.

  I hadn’t reckoned he would go very far into the West Fork and was surprised that a few miles in, I was still following his tracks.

  I walked silently, swept up in the beauty of the ever-constricting red walls.

  But when the shadows began to lengthen, I started to worry. I had brought no supplies, or even a lantern. Yet I was unable to turn back. I felt in my core that something was dreadfully wrong.

  When darkness overtook me, I therefore continued, even though I was no longer able to see Pa´s footsteps. I must´ve covered five or six miles when suddenly I heard the singing.

  I stood at the confluence of the West Fork and a smaller, steeper canyon, listening.

  At almost the same instant an enormous full moon began to peek over the rim of the valley.

  And I knew that song now. It pulled me along with its numinous tug. Margaret had warned me not to pursue it, but I had no willpower to resist.

  Eventually I found myself in a box canyon where the moonlight shone eerily right into a cave along the back wall. I drifted that way, like in a dream, still following the gentle melody.

  By the cave´s entrance, Pa’s hat lay on the ground. I picked it up and glanced around. Nothing. I was alone, except for whoever was singing. I set it back down and crept forward.

  It was dark beyond the entrance, but deeper into the cave I could make out a glow coming from what looked like a tunnel.

  I found Pa’s backpack on the ground there and crouched, shaking tremulously. I could sense a low hum seeping from the passageway, and it frightened me.

  In the pack, I found a lantern, and lit it using some wood matches that were stored with it. I felt better having a light, but as soon as the flame picked up, the singing stopped.

  Then I thought I could hear sobbing or choking coming from deeper into the tunnel.

  Someone was in there, I was sure of it now. Not too far away.

  “Pa!” I shouted, and the darkness swallowed my cry without an echo.

  Only silence, and the low hum, greeted me.

  Despair swept over me like a cold fog.

  Was the melody that had led me to this cave an instruction? Or was it a deceit? I didn’t know.

  I thought of Pa.

  I gulped down a mouthful of air and began to sing the melody from memory, as best I could.

  Darkness swept over Howard in wretched waves of despair and regret. He seemed no longer in touch with his body. The room spun and pulsed around him, but he could make no sense of any of it.

  For a moment he saw Nancy smiling before him, saying, “Nothin’ lasts.”

  The room seemed to echo his thoughts, taunting, but he no longer resisted. When he opened his eyes a fraction, he could make out a man standing before him.

  He knew it was Ydeliomen.

  “Why shoot me, señor?” the man asked.

  Howard clamped his eyes shut and screamed. Was he losing his mind? Was he dead? He shuddered as he asked himself if he was in hell.

  “I wasn’t a bad man, señor,” continued Ydeliomen, “just a sheep herder.”

  Howard covered his eyes and whimpered. “I didn’t mean to do it—I was confused. I didn’t mean it.”

  He didn’t dare open his eyes as he lay there trembling.

  And then he heard the singing.

  It was faint, but he recognized it.

  And as he listened his mind slowly came together.

  He glanced around weakly. He was alone.

  The singing seemed to grow somehow clearer, and then a surge pulsed through him when he realized it was Mattie singing this strange melody. And he somehow found the energy to flop over and begin crawling.

  “Mattie?” he screeched weakly.

  “I’m comin’ for you, Pa!” she called, and he hoarsely yelled back, “No… Stay there!”

  She hovered by the tunnel entrance, listening breathlessly as his stifled groans grew slowly closer. The pile of bones and chains horrified her, and she dared not think what else could be down that tunnel.

  Eventually he came within sight of her, and she rushed towards him and dragged him over the bones, and into the chamber where the water dripped. She ripped a strip of cloth from her dress, wet it in one of the Sinaguan bowls, and dabbed his face with it.

  “I got you, Pa,” Mattie said.

  Howard slumped in her arms. He was happy to be alive, and out of the mad tunnel.

  But then he suddenly remembered Wilson and his violent threats. “Where’s Wilson?” he asked in a panic.

  Mattie shook her head. “We’re alone here, Pa.”

  “You gotta help Margaret and the children,” said Howard, panic rising in his weak voice. “Don’t let Wilson near them—he’s gone mad. He’ll kill ‘em all if he gets a chance.”

  Mattie stood up and backed away. “What should I do?” she asked, but Howard was beyond exhaustion and collapsed, unconscious.

  Mattie looked around, desperate.

  In the dark recess she spotted the bear claw necklace.

  Outside, moonlight illuminated the box canyon.

  Following an instinct, she grabbed the necklace, and when she emerged into the box canyon, she put it on.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  The straps of the leather backpack tugged sharply on Wilson’s shoulders as he staggered through the West Fork, but he didn’t dare take it off.

  His mind still reeled as if drunk from the treasure, and he clutched the rifle in both hands, as if he expected someone to jump in front of him at any moment.

  He had stumbled out of Itzel Canyon half-mad, hell-bent on revenge, a sinister voice in his head repeatedly asking—how could they not have shared such a treasure? He now believed they’d all known about it, regardless of what Howard had told him in that dark tunnel.

  The Thompsons, the Purtymuns, the Howards—they all had to go. He would never forgive them.

  His pack contained a fortune. It had been difficult to take so little, but he knew he would return later and claim it all.

  He’d come back better armed, with paid men whom he could trust.

  In his hands he was clutching a handful of the coins, and he gripped them so tightly that his knuckles shone white.

  He felt bewitched. At times, he was ebullient, overflowing with joy, and couldn’t even remember what he was angry about. And then he would slip into a rage and shout at objects that seemed to melt before his very eyes. The land shifted and swayed as he stumbled down the West Fork.

  And then Bear Howard’s West Fork cabin was suddenly before him.

  The sharp crack of glass breaking resounded in the West Fork. Richard Wilson was in Howard’s cabin, stumbling around in the dark, smashing everything he could lay his hands on.

  “Liar!” he screamed as he flipped over a wooden rocker.

  He swigged on a jug of Howard’s whiskey.

  Outside, the moon lingered over the confluence of the West Fork and Oak Creek, but in here the cabin was full of shadows.

  “You got any more secrets for me, Bear?” he shouted.

  Eventually, he found a lantern, and lit it using some wooden matches he found by the wood stove.

  A ghostly white light crept from the lantern.

  Wilson glanced at
himself in a small square of mirror, mounted to the wall, and was surprised to see he was covered with an orange powder.

  He tried to shake it out of his hair, but the effort made him sneeze—and in the process he inhaled much of it.

  The cabin spun around him.

  Wilson stepped outside and sat on a stump, where he had left Thompson’s small rifle. From the murky shadows he heard someone whisper—and then laughter.

  He put a bullet in the chamber.

  “Who’s out there?” he shouted to the night.

  He stared at the flickering flames of the lantern, and in them he saw faces—terrors from his past that he’d prayed were forgotten.

  He quickly looked away and tried to shake off the images by downing a large gulp of the whiskey, then tossed the near-empty bottle into the side of the cabin.

  Wilson lifted himself laboriously from the stump and started down the trail, in the direction of the new Purtymun-Howard cabin. He stuck his arm through the handle of the lantern, letting it dangle from his elbow while keeping his finger on the rifle’s trigger as he peered ahead.

  Above, a full moon glowed down on the forest, and he realized he had no need for the lantern, but its glow comforted him.

  When he reached the Purtymun-Howard cabin, he fired two shots into the air and shouted, “Everyone out!”

  Margaret answered the door, a Colt pistol in her hand.

  “What do you want, Mr. Wilson?”

  He was confused to meet her here.

  “Where are the men? Where’s Jesse and Stephen?”

  “They’re gone—it’s just me and the children. It’s the middle of the night, what do you want?”

  “I want what’s mine!” he shouted. “Now get out!”

  Behind Margaret, the sleepy children crowded and whimpered, looking as nervous as horses before a storm. The older boys were timidly trying to see past her.

  Suddenly, Wilson tossed the lantern against the side of the cabin where it burst into flames.

  “Obey me!” he shrieked.

  Margaret lowered her gun and looked at him. “What have you done?”