by Brian Hodge
Wrongness.
It wasn't his business, he reminded himself.
Except those … things … had come after him. And if they had caught him, would he have ended up like the low-riders? Dead. Dismembered.
He shook his head, trying to push away the unpleasantness. No hunches, please; just the facts. But the fact was, the day before had certainly been strange. First there'd been the curious hitchhiker. And then the gruesome deaths in the mountains.
But it's not my business.
I don't want to get involved. Just as he hadn't wanted to get involved when he was younger.
But … But he had to see. Had to see what was left in the mountains after he had reported the deaths.
Agitated, he ran a hand through his hair, then left the room, the keys of the pickup jingling in his pocket. He drove quickly out Central with the yellow sunlight, just edging above the mountains, shining in his eyes. It was a cool morning, and he had brought along a jacket, knowing it would be even cooler in the mountains, but he also knew that long before noon the day would be warm.
Too warm.
Too strange.
He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw, suspended above the Rio Grande Valley, two hot-air balloons. He grinned at the sight. In only a few days the International Hot-Air Balloon Fiesta, held annually in Albuquerque, would commence and the city's skies would be graced with hundreds of the rainbow-hued balloons. For over ten years the Fiesta had been held in the city, but the sight of the immense balloons, their burners firing every few seconds, drifting overhead in the perfect blue sky, never failed to bring traffic in the streets—and on the freeways—to a full stop. The rate of minor traffic accidents rose dramatically at this time, but no one seemed to mind.
Once he'd gone up with a friend who'd crewed for one of the better known balloonists. It had been bitterly cold at that high altitude, and he had been a little wary of the gondola basket, which he'd thought too flimsy, but the magnificent aerial view of Seven Sisters volcanoes to the west, of the green ribbon of trees along the Rio Grande, of the sheer flatness and deep coloring of the desert below for miles, had more than compensated for any physical discomfort he'd suffered.
Maybe he'd go again this year. After all, he was out of work and didn't have anything else planned
If he managed to get a job in the city, he supposed he should let his parents know; He didn't talk often with them; it was too painful for everyone. "You're a disappointment," his father had said to him one year, "to me, to your family, to your people." He wasn't, though, but he couldn't convince him otherwise.
Occasionally he received a brief letter from his mother, relaying news about his aunts and uncles and his cousins, and always, always there, written not in ink, was her unhappiness. His father never wrote to him. Maybe if he had stayed there, continued his training as a tribal shaman, maybe then things would have been different. Maybe then his father would have been proud of him. Maybe. But he hadn't. And that had been the beginning of the years-long rift.
His shaman training. When Chato had been fourteen, his father had taken him to the old man, who lived at the edge of town, and said, "The boy is a dreamer of dreams." He had left Chato with the grey-haired man, Ryan Josanie. Josanie who was so old he did not count his life in years and whose face was deeply lined like the sun-baked earth. Josanie had studied him in the dimness of the house, and then, at last, had said, even as the boy was beginning to shift about uncomfortably, "The old ways must be taught, must be preserved. And you are gifted with the sense—touched." He had nodded, not knowing what else to do, believing what his father had said when he'd told about the dreams, and that day had begun his training. He had enjoyed it, thought it was exciting, fun, something to boast about to the other kids at school. It was a game to him, but Josanie said it was an honor—and a burden that he must come to accept after a time.
"Spiritual power comes through visions," the old man went on, "'and you have many images in your head. I will teach you the symbolism of color, the use of pollen, stones, shells. I will show you the old ways, and they will live in you. They will never die, for when you are old, you will pass then onto another who is young."
They will never die, the old man had said.
And he learned, and studied, and each day when he left the school, he would go to Josanie's house, and he would listen to the old man until the light faded from the rooms, and then he would go home to do his school homework and to think about what Josanie had taught him that day. His parents were impressed with his progress. "Josanie says you're one of his best students," his father said gruffly, and slapped him on the shoulders—proud of him, he knew. His mother had smiled proudly, and he, too, had felt proud. His brother Ross, just eleven, had said nothing, although Chato had known the kid was impressed. He worked bard for a year and then entered high school, where he began to play football seriously. And football practice was after school, and that interfered with his sessions with Josanie. "On the weekends come," said Josanie in a voice Chato knew was disapproving. He came on the weekends, and studied, and listened, and Josanie told Chato he would save the Chiricahua people, and Chato had scoffingly said that they no longer exist, that their time was gone. "You were named for the chief," said Josanie, "You can be a great man for our people. You can bring them back to the glory of the past."
"As warrior or medicine man?" Chato asked.
"As both," Josanie said.
He went home, and dreamed dreams, and saw himself years later as a shaman, and his people came to him, asking for his wisdom, asking for his decision, asking for his help, and always there was Josanie, an amorphous face floating over his shoulder, whispering to him that he had the power to make them great. His father began to talk of the greatness of the Apache, and he listened quietly. "You have been picked," he said, "for Josanie tells me so. Picked to help us become great again," and in that moment Chato learned of the great anger that had gone so long unacknowledged in his father's soul, the anger that was in many of his people's souls—anger at the way they had been treated by the white man, anger at how their tribe had been reduced from its once great numbers, anger at how the old ways were rapidly being lost.
Anger. They were all angry, but he wasn't. He didn't feel the anger inside, the anger they wanted him to feel, and in his sixteenth year he became uneasy, and the dreams he dreamed were of blood, white man's blood and white woman's blood, and he heard the war cries of old, and he knew it was because of him. And he did not speak of it to Josanie, and though he continued to study, his mind was not fully on it now. Then, in his seventeenth year, the day after high school graduation ceremonies, he walked out to the lonely house and told Josanie he wasn't going to study with him any longer. It was a burden he didn't want to assume. It was too great for him, too much; he couldn't handle it. And Josanie had turned away, his face to the wall, and had not even tried to talk him out of his decision. And he had gone home and told them. His father had raised his voice and fists to him, and he had gone to his room, and packed, and left, though his mother, between sobs, begged him to stay.
He hitchhiked up to Albuquerque, where he found jobs to bring in money. He had already been accepted at the University, had a scholarship, and he worked hard at his studies, worked hard at forgetting the visions and the shaman training. But the dreams remained. They came to him in college, in the war, came afterward, when he went to graduate school and became a professor, persisted even when he quit to find outside work.
They haunted him, these dreams, and made him unhappy, uneasy, never satisfied with what he was doing, and so he drifted.
And that was his real reason for returning to Albuquerque. He had had a dream. The job was the excuse. The dream was the reason. "He was curious; he wanted to see what the dream meant, for it remained only vague shadows and shapes to him, and he was pulled—pulled by something unknown. And so he came, and said he was looking for a job. But he didn't care.
A horn shrilled; he jerked his mind back to the present and his
truck back into the proper lane.
That had been close. He glanced in the rearview mirror and could still see the other, driver's fist shaking at him. He tried to shrug it off lightly, but couldn't. He was breathing heavily, and something was pressing against his chest, and was this fear—fear?—after all these years? Fear of what? Of a would-be accident? Or of something to come?
He swung past a Volkswagen crawling up the grade of Tijeras Canyon, and soundlessly he hummed a tune. Not much traffic heading into the canyon at this time of day. A lot coming out, though, into the city, and he was grateful not to have to watch for other drivers.
He turned on the radio and listened to music and the news. The murders in the mountains were reported, but the police were claiming a bear had killed the picnickers. He wasn't mentioned.
When the news was over, he turned the radio off and drove, thinking of nothing, just directing an occasional look into the mirrors. He passed a few cars and concentrated on getting to the picnic grounds in as little time as possible. Within thirty minutes he was turning off to the Crest. Soon he had pulled up to the same overgrown. track he'd seen the day before. This morning the only difference was that the grass had been trampled and tire tracks patterned the dirt.
He passed the flat rock where he had seen the lizard. A fine cloud of gnats danced over a fading flower, darted away as he came closer. He paused under a spruce. Something stirred in the boughs above. Alarmed, he looked up through the gloom of the branches into the round amber eyes of an owl. It snapped its beak, craned its head, hooted sharply and stared. Stared at him, as though it had been waiting for him. Its hoot was again sharp and sent a shiver down his back. Suddenly it flapped its wings and flew away. He backed away.
A bad sign.
An owl stays in the place where people have died, and when it comes it's a sign that someone is going to die, or so the old teachings said.
Ghosts and owls, and those about to die.
Bunk. He tried to smile, failed. His colleagues in the geology department would be laughing hysterically at him now, teasing him about being frightened of a bird.
Not just any bird. An owl.
It was only a bird, not an omen.
Religious nonsense of an old dying religion.
Religious nonsense that had no place in this world, no place in him.
Say it again and again and again … and believe.
He walked on, his boots dislodging a pebble. It rolled away, landed on the broad stone with a ping, and he felt uneasy at having disturbed the rock. Somewhere in the distance he heard the faint call of the owl again. He kept walking and listened to … nothing.
Complete silence. Not even the whisper of the wind in the firs. Not the call of birds, not even of the owl now. He came to the clearing where he'd found the Chicanos. And there was nothing. The cars and vans had been cleared away, the bodies removed, and nothing other than scattered rusty stains on the ground remained to remind him of what he'd discovered the afternoon before. He paced the perimeters of the picnic area, not wanting to step onto the actual surface. He could have laughed at his squeamishness. After all, he'd been in Vietnam; he'd seen worse there, far worse, and yet—and yet he didn't want to touch where the bodies had been.
Why? he thought sardonically. There's nothing here. Uneasily aware again of the unnatural silence of the mountain forest, he wasn't so sure of that.
He left the picnic area and found himself in a grassy dale surrounded by spindly spruces. The light dimmed and he glanced overhead. The sky had darkened to an intense blue, dramatically unlike the light blue it had been when he'd driven to the mountains. As he watched, it deepened to the shade of midnight. A bolt of lightning ripped open the belly of the sky. Lights, blood red, swirled in the darkness, coalesced and formed a ball. The fiery ball plummeted earthward.
Toward him.
He reeled back. As he raced toward the protection of the trees, the trajectory of the lightning curved, following him, exploding against the trunks. The drying needles burst into flames as droplets of fire rained on him. With a painful grunt he whirled back toward the open space. His foot slipped on the grass, and he fell faceward, his stomach hitting the ground first. For a moment he was dazed, unable to breathe, to move, aware only of the coiled lightning that flickered above him, around him. He started to rise, was nearly knocked down by a fiery crackling ball.
He flung himself down on the ground and buried his face in the wet grass. Coward. Yeah. He couldn't make it, couldn't get past the lightning. But he sure as hell couldn't stay out here in the open.
The lightning. His people called it the arrows of the cloud-dwelling Thunder People. He had always been frightened of it when he was a child; even as an adult he didn't like it.
First the owl. Then the lightning.
Omens. Bad omens.
He risked a glance, his face damp, and watched the display of dazzling lights. The leaves of the trees surrounding the dale burned with a hellish fire. Acrid smoke trailed upward, stung his eyes, forced him to cough. A tree trunk exploded, sending slivers of wood outward and downward. As the lightning sped past, the air crackled; his skin itched, being so close, and he could feel the warmth of it. A bolt of lightning struck a massive evergreen and the ground rocked. Almost as if in slow motion, the branches of the tree peeled away from the trunk, needles raining toward him. Fire blossomed upward.
He flung his face into the grass again, slivers scraping his scalp and his back through the shirt, and bringing blood across the tops of his hands.
A bolt of blue-white fire darted over him, the smell of ozone clogging his throat. A few feet away lightning shrieked as it struck the ground, split into smaller flashes, which in turn split even smaller until it almost touched him. Thunder rumbled immediately afterward—dark, loud booming and rolling sounds that drummed deafeningly into his ears.
Panting heavily, sweating, bleeding from the burns and cuts, he scrambled onto his scraped knees and hands, then onto his feet, and half-ran, half-stumbled toward the shelter of the nearest tree.
Before he reached the spruce, though, it burst into flames, the force thrusting him backward. He landed jarringly on his back, the wind knocked momentarily out of him. Helplessly he watched as an immense ball of lightning, far larger than the others he had seen, diffusing sparks forming a fiery aureole, whirled straight for him. He tried to get up. Couldn't, his muscles and sinews failing him. He watched. Closer and closer it came. He watched the shimmering light, heard the terrifying snap as it sped through the air, watched, watched … closer and closer … and closer, and he heard the whispers, saw the eyes watching him. Closer and …
He shut his eyes. Waited. For his death.
Nothing happened.
He opened his eyes.
The lightning was gone. The sky overhead was midmorning blue once more. The leaves and needles no longer burned.
Dazed, he sat up. His hair had come loose, and with a hand still unsteady he pushed it out of his eyes. He brushed brown leaves from his sleeve and stared. None of the leaves, the trees, the grass was singed. There was no sign of smoke.
Nothing.
As if it hadn't happened.
He couldn't have been dreaming—hell, hallucinating. It had been too realistic, too hellish.
He pushed himself slowly to his feet, looking. Again nothing. His black eyebrows pulled together in a frown. It didn't make sense. How could lightning hit almost everything in sight, rain down on the ground, and then there be no sign?
It didn't make sense; nor did the night sky in the day. None of this did.
He searched the backs of his hands. No scrapes there. No burns. No bruises.
His frown deepened as he tried to figure it out, couldn't. He headed back into the forest; nothing had made much sense since he'd picked up the hitchhiker the day before. He paused, then:
An owl called, and he heard the whispers, the soft whispers in the bushes, and he ran to the truck.
After he parked the truck, he walked to the
convenience store and bought a sandwich and a carton of milk and a Hershey bar, and a newspaper, then returned to his motel room. He read the paper carefully, section by section, as he chewed on his cheese and bologna sandwich. He drained the milk in one long swallow and tossed the carton in the wastepaper basket by the bed. It hit the rim, fell on the floor, but he didn't notice.
This was the early afternoon edition of the Courier. Usually slim, it contained news that had occurred after the morning issue had gone to bed, which was generally early the previous evening.
It reported that a number of Chicanos, picnicking in the Sandias, had been killed by a bear, perhaps bears. A similar incident had involved some Texans, who'd been found mauled a few days before.
Nothing was said about his discovery of the bodies. Nothing.
What he had seen with his eyes didn't say that a bear had been there.
And Daltry had claimed it hadn't been an animal.
He crossed his arms on the bedspread, rested his head on his arms and stared down at the worn carpet.
Something was odd, as odd as his experience in the mountains with the lightning had been. Just as odd, just as unnatural.
Common sense told him that.
The radio news had said it was a bear, and he imagined that was the same story on TV and in the newspapers.
He didn't believe it.
He stared across at the cracked mirror on the dresser, stared at the reflection of the Western landscape painting above the bed.
Had his eyes, ears, senses perhaps played tricks on him up there in the mountains? No, he hadn't imagined any of it. Not the owl, the lightning, the darkness … the whispers. None of it.
Forget it.
Couldn't.
Couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't keep it out of his mind.
And he had been wrong. Very wrong.
It was his business. He was involved. He certainly couldn't ignore that. Twice in two days he'd seen something strange in the mountains, sensed the oddness. Not only was he involved; he was caught up in it, and he didn't even know what it was.