by Brian Hodge
The bitch circled one of the creatures. Her lips were pulled back into a frozen snarl. She had watched her unweaned pups die one by one, felt even then the milk in her teats dry. She leaped at the shadow and it drew back. Emboldened, she advanced as the shadow withdrew. Closer and closer she came, watching the evil eyes staring at her. She bounded forward, her jaw open to rend the shadow. From the trees dropped other creatures, creatures that seized her legs, her neck, and began biting her, inflicting her with more pain than she'd ever had in any battle. They gnawed at her tail, her stomach, forced her to endure pain, would not allow her to die. Slowly, with their talons, they ripped her belly open, and she heaved a deep sigh as her intestines spilled onto the mire, the pools of water growing pink.
The old dog kicked out with his back legs, raked with his teeth and leaped aside as one of the creatures jumped from a low-hanging branch. The dog slipped in the mud, red with the blood of his pack, and whirled to face his enemies. They ringed him now. Warily he watched. They would go after him in a moment, as they had with the others. Would tear open his belly, slice his throat, pluck his single eye. Out of the corner of his good eye he saw the raw carcasses of what had been his pack. The bodies looked as if they had been stripped of skin, the flesh underneath exposed to the pulsing rain. He slid in the mud and one of the shadows charged. He jumped, coming down on the shadow and something crunched as it gave way under him. A high-pitched scream tore into his ears, and then he was jolted, knocked from the creature by something he had not seen, could not see. He lay wheezing on his side, unable to move, to get up, to defend himself. Above him, around him, he saw the shadows. He snarled as they approached. Pain blazed in his mind, and he blacked out, his teeth still snapping.
Warmth. Someone patted his head. A soothing voice. A clatter of a bowl set on the floor.
He opened his undamaged eye; the rain had stopped. Flies buzzed around the bodies of the puppies, the old bitch, the young one. Chunks of flesh lay separate from the bodies, and already the forest scavengers had begun their work. Overhead, in a calm, blue sky that showed no sign of the recent thunderstorm, three buzzards wheeled in lazy circles. Waiting. Patiently.
He twisted his head to one side, the sand rubbing against the rawness of his hide.
The shadows were gone.
Slowly he lurched to his feet and found only one paw that didn't hurt. The tip of his tail was gone, and blood streamed from the gashes on his back, his sides, his head. One ear was half chewed off; his eye watered so that he could hardly see out of it. He rubbed his face in the grass, could see again.
He limped toward the bodies of his bitch, his pups, but nothing of them remained. None of the others were alive. Only he was. The oldest. The hardiest. The leader.
He turned away, leaving the lair, walking painfully on raw-rubbed pads. He did not look back. He did not see if the shadows watched, if they followed.
He walked, leaving a red trail behind him. He continued walking through the forest, picking his way carefully past the sharp stones and sticks, the broken glass and rusted tin cans, the spent shotgun cases. He ignored the raucous cries of the birds, the curious bright eyes of the ground squirrels. He walked past boulders and trees, and finally past lawns and through streets, walked and walked, into the territory of Man.
He heard the voices long before he saw the humans, long before he had come down the slope. And he had followed them, knowing he would find help. Knowing that from his past.
When he reached the edge of the playground, he sat down on his haunches, whined as pain shot up his back.
"Look! A dog!"
A boy bailed out of the canvas swing and ran toward him. Three other children, two girls and a boy, followed.
The dog started toward them, his tongue out, his nose sniffing.
"Oh, he's been hurt," one of the girls, dark-haired and dark-faced, said. She started to put her arms around his neck.
"Don't, Maria," cautioned the older boy. "You'll get blood on your dress."
"I wonder who he belongs to."
"He don't have tags."
"Maybe he's been running loose in the mountains."
"How did he get hurt?"
They began to pat him slowly and gently on the head. It felt good. One of the girls found an old plastic margarine bowl and filled it with tepid water from an outside faucet. He lapped it up as quickly as if it'd been cold. His single eye closed and he panted heavily, his sides rising and falling rapidly. The sun was warm on him, making him sleepy. And the children were kind, their words gentle. If he slept, the pain would go away, and he would dream of chasing rabbits, and when he woke, the old bitch would be there to lick his face.
"Look. Something's outside the fence," said the girl who had wanted to hug him. She pointed in the direction from which the dog had come.
The older boy squinted in the sunlight, then shook his head. "I don't see nothin'. You're nuts."
"I am not, Carlos. There is something there." She looked indignantly at her brother, then stooped to pet the dog.
"Maybe it's another dog," suggested the second girl, who had quickly fetched the water for the dog.
The dog was too tired now to sit. He lay with his head resting on his outstretched paws, his strength, his life ebbing away. The pain was easing now. A fly buzzed around his nose and he didn't bother to snap at it. His eyelid twitched, but he kept it closed.
"Girls are always thinking they see things. That's what Dad says."
"Nice, look Carlos. Maria was right." The younger boy stared outside the chain-link fence.
The scent of decay floated across to the dog, mixed with the acrid odor of dust and the sweat of the children. That scent…. He struggled to open his eye, could not, bared his broken teeth in a silent snarl.
"You afraid? I'm not." Carlos stepped toward the gate.
"No, Carlos, don't go." His sister tried to keep him with them, but he shook her hand off his arm and kept going.
The dog raised his head, nose straight in the air, and bayed deeply, an eerie sound floating across the silent playground. Maria, wringing her hands, followed her brother.
Carlos opened the gate.
And Maria screamed.
CHAPTER NINE
When he got back to his motel room, he kicked the door shut and dropped on the bed, without even bothering to take off his boots. After they'd left the restaurant, he and Laura had cruised the downtown area, checking to see if they could find Junior, but they'd had no luck.
Finally she said she had to return to the paper and get going on her story about Senator Kent's visit, so he took her back to the Hilton to her car. Then he came back here to get out of the heat.
Something seemed to whisper in his mind, but he ignored it, closed his eyes, and thought.
Always the mountains. All these incidents revolved about that location.
But what about the priest?
Natural death or something more?
He frowned, trying to remember where the priest had been staying when he was killed … when he died.
He rolled over onto his stomach and reached under the nightstand to get the Albuquerque phone directory. He flipped through the pages, ran his finger down the columns until he found the number he wanted.
It took five rings before someone answered.
"The San Carlos Roman Catholic Retreat." It was a man's voice, placid, gentle, low in timbre. Monkish, he thought, with a half-smile.
"Hi. I don't know if you can help me; I don't really know who to talk to." He tried to make his voice as apologetic as possible.
The man on the other end responded. "That's all right. What seems to be the problem?"
"I'd like to talk to you about the priest who died up there yesterday."
When he spoke again, the man's voice seemed more restrained than it had. Subtly different, he thought. Suspicious. Careful.
"Are you with the press, Mr. uh?"
"Ruiz," he supplied. "Yes."
"This priest was from back East, an
d simply over exerted himself. It's a sad, but common enough experience, we have found, to our sorrow. They're just not used to the high altitude and low oxygen content. A real problem for us, as you can well imagine."
The voice was still polite, but more than a little curious, he thought.
"I wanted to confirm a rumor I'd heard."
Silence for a moment. "What is the nature of this rumor, Mr. Ruiz?"
"I heard that he had been slashed and bitten and was left in a pretty horrible state. That sure doesn't sound like a heart attack."
Some hesitancy now. "Perhaps, Mr. Ruiz, you would like to talk with our prior?"
"No, that's okay."
"What newspaper did you say you were with?"
"I didn't."
"I'm afraid I cannot continue this conversation unless you identify yourself."'
Mexican standoff. What next?
"I've got to go now. Thanks a lot. You've been very helpful." He hung up.
He couldn't stop here, not when things were getting mildly bewildering. He would have to make more calls. He called the Sheriff's Department. It was a call he should have made earlier; he shouldn't have waited so long to talk to Daltry again.
But he didn't have to worry about that.
Sheriff Daltry, one of the deputies reported, had gone on vacation. Starting this morning. And no, he wasn't sure when Daltry was coming back, but he thought it was a long vacation. Like two weeks, maybe longer. Could he take a message?
No, he said curtly and hung up.
He called Information, got the number for the Archdiocese in Santa Fe. The priest had suffered a heart attack, the woman there reported.
Did the city handle the priest's autopsy report? he asked.
Silence for a moment; then she asked if he would like to talk with the Archbishop's assistant. Would he care to give his name?
No, he would not, and he hung up again. From the woman's tone of voice, he knew that the man at the retreat had already called the Archdiocese.
He should get the coroner's report on the priest's death.
Find out if the man had had a heart attack. But they didn't let private citizens see those. Maybe Laura could?
He made another call, this time to the University. Daltry hadn't mentioned the anthropologist's name, but there were only two professors who could have been contacted by the Sheriff's Department.
Thirty minutes later he stared A the floor again, the frustration filling in him.
Damn.
Double damn.
The first professor was on sabbatical this year. Obviously she couldn't have been the one contacted. The second one—much more promising, he told himself—was out in the field and couldn't be reached unless it was an emergency. How long had he been in the field? He'd left earlier today.
Too coincidental.
And another dead end.
What was going on? He didn't like all this vagueness, and he shivered as something whispered in his mind, and he sought to shut it out.
Griffen took the call himself, and waited until his secretary left the office. He leaned back in the swivel chair. "Yeah?"
"It's about the man I told you about earlier," said the soft voice on the other line. "The one who found the bodies in the mountains." The voice paused. "He's been out to one of the pueblos. My friend at the Cultural Center called me."
"There's no harm in that," Griffen said easily. He flipped through his calendar, noted the penned engagements there.
"No. But he was asking her about the old ways."
Griffen looked up. "Old ways?"
"Yes, my friend."
"Do you think he's with that troublemaker Yellow Colt?"
"I don't know about that, although he was spotted with the man at the Hilton, as well as with that reporter Rainey, the one who's been bothering you."
"Yeah, a real bitch. Young and stupid. She doesn't know how to play the game yet."
"He also called the retreat, as well as the office up here."
Griffen frowned. "That's much more serious. But how do you know it was him?"
"We taped the calls. The voices were the same." There was a pause. "What do you want me to do?"
The mayor rubbed the bridge of his nose and stared across the room at a picture of him shaking hands with a president.
"Put someone on his tail. At all times. Got me, Richard?"
"As always, Doug, as always."
The caller hung up, and Griffen looked out the window and drummed his fingers on the desk top. He didn't need Indians, acting on their own or in a group, making trouble for him now—particularly now, and he glanced at his calendar again and the red-ringed date there.
CHAPTER TEN
The yellow eyes stared at him; he heard the harsh whispers. They called him by name, and he tried to brush the murmuring away with a shake of his head, as if the sound were nothing more than flies buzzing in a living cloud around him.
They called, those voices, old and expectant.
And waited.
He saw them in the bushes, in the trees, staring at him with their evil yellow eyes, eyes that hated, eyes that lived for fear.
And he waited. He crouched on a large, flat rock in a clearing, and waited.
Like the eyes.
He tried to move and could not. Not even his foot, not even a single finger would respond. Sweat trickled down his face, swept into his eyes, into the corner of his mouth, and he tasted the salt of fear.
They watched. And waited.
Sometime in the past a terrible fire had swept through this part of the forest, leaving stark skeletons of trees. Little greenery showed on the branches, and he wondered why the leaves hadn't come back. A moment before the sun had been shining overhead, but now the sky had darkened, the angry, black clouds appearing out of nowhere. They covered the blue, and thunder boomed off in the distance. Through a rip in the clouds he saw flickering yellow light. An arc leaped from a cloud to a tree; the tree was back lighted for a moment, then exploded, flames shooting dozens of feet in the air.
Still he could not move.
He watched as raindrops fell on the ground, and where they struck the dry, cracked ground, yellow flames leaped up. They surrounded the rock, arched toward him, and beyond the circle of fire he could see the shadow creatures. Behind them was a wall of night. They were coming toward him, those shades, those eyes, those whispers.
And they stood around him and stared and beckoned and whispered. His name. They touched him, caressingly, then ripped their talons across his bare chest. He screamed in pain and tried to get away. But couldn't.
Ribbons of blood appeared on his skin and he watched it seep down toward his navel. One of the creatures leaped forward, its claws clicking on the rock, and it clambered up next to him. It bent its shadowhead down and lapped at the blood, and each long lick sent waves of agony through him. Its tongue was barbed, and it ripped chunks of flesh from his chest. More blood welled out, spurting with each vigorous pump of his heart, and the other shadow creatures joined the first one.
They feasted on his body, and he would not die. Could not. Each touch brought new agony, new hell. He screamed over and over, but no one listened; he made no noise. He pounded his fists, but didn't move.
Then the blackness he'd seen behind the shadow creatures swooped toward him. Enveloped him. Smothered him.
He screamed, knew no more.
And when he woke, he was lying on the bed. The sun had gone down and the room was darkened, the only light coming from the neon sign outside the bungalow. He drew his hand across his chest and felt wetness. Panicked, he lunged at the lamp on the bedside table. In its yellow light he stared down at his hand.
Sweat. That was what he'd felt on his chest. Sweat. Not blood.
It was a dream, he reassured himself. Only a dream. A nightmare. He wiped his hand on the bedspread, rose unsteadily to his feet, staggered toward the bathroom. His hand found the light switch, flicked it up, and he thought he saw something skitter across the tile
floor. He stared at the white tub. Along one side, its end tucked into the tub, was a dingy white Shower curtain. It concealed half of the tub. Behind it he saw a crouching shadow. Licking his lips, he stepped carefully forward. He was aware of the cool touch of the floor under his bare feet; he heard the ticking of his watch, louder to his ears than ever before; outside a horn sounded; distantly church bells rang the hour. And his breathing filled his ears. He tried to quiet it, so it wouldn't alert the creature.
But it knew he was coming.
And it was hiding.
Then he could hurt it. He didn't have a weapon. Only his hands.
He was past the toilet now. Careful now, careful.
How had it managed to get into his room? He glanced sideways, saw the open window, the torn screen. Somehow it had followed him, found him, then slipped in while he was asleep. It had waited. No, it had been coming out to get him, to kill him, when he had surprised it. He had cornered it in the bathtub.
He frowned. Maybe it wasn't alone He concentrated on the shower curtain. He saw only one shadow. Maybe the others were waiting outside.
Step carefully. Quietly. His arm rose, his hand reaching out for the curtain. He grasped it, yanked it back, the rings jingling along the rod. And he stared down into the tub.
The bathtub was empty, except for a water stain by the drain.
He could breathe again.
It hadn't been there. Never. Or perhaps it had escaped somehow. No. It had simply been his imagination, fired by his too real nightmare. Breathing deeply, trying to calm the pounding in his chest and ears, he walked over to the sink. He opened on the faucets full blast and splashed water on his, face, throat, neck, then took a washcloth and sponged off his chest. As he tossed the washcloth on the glass shelf above the sink, he noticed what looked like red on it. But when he checked, nothing stained the white terry cloth.
Imagination, he told himself.
He grinned at himself in the mirror, and thought he looked terrible. Maybe it was the lighting. All of maybe a 40-watt light bulb. His skin held a grey pallor under it, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His hair was straggling. He combed it with his fingers, pushing back the worst offenders. He'd change clothes, go out for a walk and a dinner somewhere. He'd treat himself, find a halfway decent restaurant, not a cafe, for a change. Order a nice robust meal, not sandwiches, and eat until he'd satisfied his appetite.