by Mark Anthony
Local legend held that no one came to Castle City by accident. Travis didn’t know much about legends. All he knew was that people who passed through Castle City on their way to someplace else had a tendency never to leave. Each of them always said the same thing—that the first time they laid eyes on Castle City it felt like they had found something they didn’t even know they were looking for. Maybe it was the beauty of the place, maybe it was that they felt like they belonged here, or maybe, as some people believed, it was that the valley had called to them, and somehow they had listened. Travis couldn’t say which explanation was right. Perhaps they all were.
Travis himself hadn’t decided to come here. Like everything in his life, it had just happened to him. He never had been good at making choices. At eighteen he had left the faded Illinois farmhouse where he had grown up to attend junior college in Champaign. He never saw his parents or that house again. Travis couldn’t remember exactly what he had studied in school. He had simply drifted from one subject to the next, until one day he had found himself with a paper in his hand standing at a bus stop. He had stepped on the first bus that had come by, figuring it was as good as any. It had been headed west, and after that inertia had kept him moving in the same direction. For a time he would stop in some city, work awhile, maybe make a friend or two. Then he would find himself on another bus heading west again. Until the day he ended up in Castle City, and he felt that first breath of clean mountain wind against his face.
Andy Connell had owned the Mine Shaft then. He had hired Travis to help out behind the bar, and Travis had rented the beat-up cabin outside of town. He hadn’t decided to stay here any more than he did anywhere else. One day he just woke up and realized he had been here for years, and that he didn’t have any plans for leaving. And that was about as close to making a choice as Travis ever got. When Andy died two years ago, Travis had scraped together enough cash to buy the saloon, though whether he was going to keep it was a point he and the bank disagreed on monthly.
He made his way to the bar, and Max looked up from his pile of papers and grinned.
“Didn’t think I could handle the place on my own, did you, Travis?”
Travis lifted a hinged section of wood and stepped through. “What makes you say that, Max?”
“Nothing really. Just little things, I suppose. Like the fact that you’re always muttering under your breath that you don’t think I can handle the place on my own.”
Travis winced. “Oh.” He pulled a brown bottle of homemade root beer from the chiller and twisted the top. “Let me guess. I have a tendency to think aloud sometimes, don’t I?”
“Don’t worry, Travis. It’s just one of your endearing little quirks.”
Travis wondered what the others might be but opted not to ask. He wasn’t altogether certain he would like the answer. Instead, he checked the kegs to see if any needed changing, then started washing dirty mugs in the bar sink. Max tapped his pencil against the papers in front of him. He might have fled the anxiety of his Wall Street job for the peace of the mountains, but number crunching was in his blood.
“You know, I think we’re going to owe some back sales tax for last year.” He fixed Travis with a speculative look. “This may just be a wild guess, but … you haven’t ever actually considered using a calculator, have you?”
“I’ve always found that doing the books is a much more creative experience without one,” Travis said. The fact was, Travis was about as good a mathematician as he was a brain surgeon. He had been more than relieved to surrender the books to Max, but he wasn’t about to let his employee know that.
Max shut the ledger and groaned in despair. “Why don’t you just stick a pencil in my heart and get it over with, Travis? It would be simpler for both of us.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Travis said. “This way isn’t nearly so messy.”
Defeated for the moment, Max tromped back to the storeroom to hunt for more paper napkins. Travis grabbed a rag to wipe down the bar and enjoyed his victory. As an employer it was his duty to torment Max. That he enjoyed it so much was simply an added bonus.
It was just after eight o’clock when Castle County sheriff’s deputy Jacine Windom stepped through the door of the saloon. For a moment Travis thought she had come by for a beer, then he noticed the gun at her belt. She was on duty. Jace tipped her hat toward Travis from across the room, then marched through the maze of mismatched tables toward the bar.
“Evening, Travis,” Jace said, her brassy voice tinged with a melodic Western twang. She thrust out a hand.
Travis smiled and took the proffered hand. “Nice to see you, Deputy Windom.” His expression edged into a grimace when she returned his grip with one of crushing strength. After she let go he had to resist the urge to rub his fingers. Deputy Windom was a small woman in her late twenties, but she carried herself with an air of authority that made her seem taller and older. She had short brown hair and wore a khaki uniform with creases sharp enough to cut a well-done steak.
Jace set her Smokey-the-Bear hat on the bar and perched on a stool, then scanned the saloon with cool eyes. “Looks like business is good tonight.”
Travis filled a mug with hot black coffee and pushed it toward her. “It’s not bad. Max hasn’t scared too many customers away.”
Jace took a swig of the scalding coffee and fixed him with a stern look. “If you don’t mind my saying, Travis, you’re too hard on Maximilian. It isn’t his fault that living in a big city makes a man soft and nervous. Your employee has a lot to overcome. But I think he’s starting to fit in nice.”
Their gazes traveled across the saloon. Now Max laughed and shook his head while the Daughters of the Frontier, with their blue cotton-candy hair and red-fringed denim jumpsuits, tried to get him to country line dance with them. Max looked up, saw Travis and Jace, and shot them a goofy hound-dog grin.
“Real nice,” Jace said and gripped her coffee mug. “In fact, get that boy a haircut and a pair of Wranglers, and he’d make a fine little cowboy.”
Travis’s eyes bulged. He stared at the deputy as she gazed in Max’s direction, and for the first time he noticed that a gold earring gleamed against each of her small, pretty ears. There was a resolute cast to her square jaw and a fierce gleam in her eyes. Something told him Max was in for a bit of a surprise.
He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “So, what was it I can help you with, Deputy Windom?”
Jace snapped around on her stool, all business once more. She pulled a small notebook from the pocket of her jacket and flipped several pages.
“We received an unusual report at the sheriff’s office earlier.”
A chill skittered along Travis’s spine. “An unusual report?”
“That’s correct. Waunita Lost Owl phoned the station at about four P.M. You know her, Travis. She works behind the counter at McKay’s General Store, lives in a double-wide just north of town. Mrs. Lost Owl was quite agitated at the time of her report. It seems she saw a …” Jace glanced down at her notebook. “… it seems she saw a delgeth in her backyard.”
Travis took a pull on his ever-present bottle of root beer. “Should I know what that is?”
Jace slipped the notebook back into a pocket of her brown leather jacket. “Not unless you happen to have a degree in Native-American folklore. I had to look it up at the library. It’s a Plains Indian myth. As far as I can tell, a delgeth is a kind of antelope spirit.”
Travis gripped the edge of the bar. He remembered the shadow he had seen that afternoon behind the old orphanage and the hoofprint pressed into the mud—a print which, now that he thought about it, could have belonged to a pronghorn antelope as easily as to a deer. He licked lips gone dry. “You don’t think Waunita really saw one of these delgeths, do you?”
Jace let out a chuckle. “I don’t think Sheriff Dominguez is worried about creatures creeping out of old myths to prowl Castle City. But he is concerned that a mountain lion might have come down from the hills. Mrs. Lost Ow
l did see something. I checked in at McKay’s and the Mosquito Café to ask if anyone else had seen it. I just thought I’d do the same here.”
For a moment Travis considered telling Jace about what he had seen. But if he told her about the shadow, then he would also have to tell her about the bells and the eerie laughter, and he didn’t want to do that. The day had turned strange enough as it was.
“I’m sorry, Deputy Windom, but if anyone has seen anything out of the ordinary, they haven’t told me about it.”
Jace scraped her barstool back, then stood and rested a casual hand on the gun at her hip. “Looks like I had better move on then. Thanks for the cup of java, Travis.” She donned her hat, tipped it toward him, then headed for the door. She cast one last piercing look in Max’s direction, then with a puff of night air the deputy was gone. Travis grabbed a tray, collected empty beer glasses, and did his best not to think about the deputy’s words.
Half an hour later, the phone rang.
Max answered, then with a resigned look held the phone out across the bar toward Travis. That Max never got any calls had been a slight point of contention lately. Max was of the opinion that at least some of the calls to the saloon should be for him, and he seemed to think it some sort of conspiracy that this wasn’t the case. The fact that Travis was the owner of the Mine Shaft and not he didn’t seem to play a significant role in Max’s logic. Travis set down a tray of mugs and took the phone.
“Travis,” the voice on the other end said in hoarse relief. “Travis, I am so thankful to have reached you.”
“Jack?” Travis cupped a hand around the phone and tried to block out some of the clamor of the saloon. He recognized the voice of his old friend Jack Graystone. “Jack, is that you?”
“Listen to me, Travis.” Jack’s faint words buzzed in his ear. “I am afraid I haven’t time to explain properly, so I can only hope that, as your friend, you will see fit to trust me.” There was a potent silence. Then, “You must come to the Magician’s Attic at once.”
Travis was taken aback. He had never heard Jack sound like this. Jack’s voice was shaking, almost as if he were alarmed. No, Travis realized with a chill—almost as if he were afraid.
“Jack, I can’t just leave the saloon.” Travis tried to keep his voice down. All the same, Max shot him a curious look. “This is our busiest night of the week.”
“But you must, Travis.” As if through great force of will, Jack’s voice calmed and slipped into the smooth, indeterminate European accent with which Travis was so familiar. “I wish I could explain over the phone what has transpired. However, I dare not.”
“Explain what?” Travis said.
“I am afraid that must wait until you come to the antique shop. I cannot trust anyone who might be listening to our conversation. Now, you mustn’t repeat to anyone what I have said.” Jack’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But you have to believe me when I tell you that my life is in grave—”
There was a click, then a hissing noise filled Travis’s ear as the phone went dead.
4.
The saloon’s door shut behind him, and Travis stepped into the night. He hunched broad shoulders inside his sheepskin coat. The crescent moon hovered over the parapets of Castle Peak, and its light rimed dark ridges like frost. The warmth and glow shut behind the buckshot-dented door of the Mine Shaft seemed suddenly far away.
He had left without much explanation, but Jack Graystone was his best friend and, however odd they seemed, Travis couldn’t go against Jack’s wishes. Besides, Max had been only too happy to have a chance to run things himself for a while. Yet what had Jack been talking about? Travis couldn’t imagine what anyone might gain by threatening the grandfatherly proprietor of a small-town antique store. There had to be a more mundane explanation for the phone call.
Travis headed to his pickup. He reached for the handle, noticed something wedged into the door crack, and plucked it out. It was a tuft of fur, silver-brown in the moonlight. He frowned. Now how had this gotten stuck in the door? A chill breath of wind snatched the tuft from his fingers, and it danced away on the wind. That most likely answered his question. He climbed into the truck, mashed down the clutch, and cranked the ignition. The engine turned over three times, then wound down with a feeble whine. He tried again. This time he was rewarded with a metallic death-knell buzz that signaled yet another battery had succumbed to the high-country climate. He smacked his forehead against the steering wheel in frustration, then climbed out.
Common sense said he should head back to the saloon and ask someone for a jump start, but if he did, people were bound to ask where he was going, and he had promised Jack. With a sigh he began hoofing it down the street. The Magician’s Attic was only a mile away: He could manage the walk. It was just nine o’clock, but the town’s lone traffic light already winked like an amber cat’s-eye in the dark. He tried not to think about Deputy Windom’s delgeth story. Once already that day he had let his imagination run away with him, and that had been enough.
Travis moved up onto the boardwalk. He passed by the door of the darkened hardware store, then paused and pushed his wire-rimmed spectacles up his nose. There it was again—the same odd symbol that had been scratched on the saloon’s door. He continued down Elk Street and saw other doors marked in similar fashion. Travis shivered and quickened his pace.
To his relief, fifteen minutes later, he found himself in front of the Magician’s Attic. The antique shop occupied the ground floor of a rambling Victorian on the west edge of Castle City, and Jack reserved the upper stories for his living space. The house was lightless and quiet, from the tower that reminded Travis of a castle’s turret to the velvet-curtained parlor windows that stared outward like heavy-lidded eyes. Was Jack even still here? Travis ascended the steps of the front porch and reached out to knock, but the door flew open before his hand touched it.
“Wotan’s Beard! It’s about time you arrived, Travis.”
Travis lurched through the doorway into the cluttered foyer beyond and barely managed to keep from falling. Jack shut the door. He carried a tin hurricane lamp, its speckled golden light the only illumination in the place.
Jack Graystone appeared to be about sixty years old, although Travis couldn’t remember him ever looking any different in the seven years they had been friends. He was a striking man, with a Roman nose and eyes of sky blue. His iron-gray beard was neatly trimmed, in contrast to his thinning hair of the same color, which had a tendency to fly rather madly about his head. He was dressed in an old-fashioned but elegant suit of English wool over a starched white shirt and a flannel waistcoat of hunter’s green. Travis had never seen him wear anything else.
“I’m sorry I took so long, Jack.” Travis tried to catch his breath. “My truck wouldn’t start, so I had to walk here.”
“You walked here?” Jack fixed him with a grave look. “That wasn’t a terribly good idea, you know, not on a night like this.”
Travis ran a hand through his sand-colored hair. “Jack, what is going on? I didn’t know what to think after the phone went dead.”
“Oh, that. Do forgive me, Travis, I’m afraid that was all my fault. You see, I thought I heard a noise in the parlor while we were talking. I turned around and accidentally cut the phone cord with a sword I was holding.”
Travis gaped at him. “A sword?”
“Yes, a sword. It’s like a large knife often used by knights in—”
“I know what a sword is.”
Jack gave him a sharp look. “Then why did you ask?”
Travis drew in an exasperated breath. As much as he liked Jack, talking with him could be a challenge. “Jack, would you please tell me why you asked me to come here?”
Jack regarded Travis with perfect seriousness. “A darkness is coming.”
With that he turned and disappeared into the dim labyrinth of the antique shop. There was nothing for Travis to do but follow. The gloom all around was filled with the flotsam and jetsam of history—chests of drawers
with porcelain knobs, lead-backed mirrors, lion-clawed andirons, velvet chaises, and weather-faded circus posters. Jack never rested in his hunt for curious and wonderful antiques. That was how he and Travis had become friends.
One day, not long after Travis started working at the Mine Shaft, Jack Graystone had stepped through the door of the saloon, incongruous in his old-fashioned attire, yet not uncomfortably so. He had asked if he might be allowed to cull the saloon’s storeroom for any “artifacts of historical interest.” Andy Connell had been out of town, but one of Travis’s assignments while Andy was away had been to clear a century’s worth of junk out of the back storeroom. Travis had been more than happy to let Jack do some of the work for him.
Yet before long—and afterward he was never quite certain just how it happened—Travis found himself on the storeroom floor, covered with grime and cobwebs, sorting through tangled piles of hundred-year-old clutter, while Jack, neatly ensconced on a barstool, politely offered direction. In the end, the saloon’s storeroom got cleaned, Travis hauled a pickup truck full of copper lanterns, bent-willow chairs, and thick-glassed purple bottles to the Magician’s Attic, and somewhere along the way Jack had apparently decided he and Travis were the best of friends. Travis had never bothered to disagree.
Still, nothing in their long friendship had prepared Travis for Jack’s behavior tonight. With Travis following on his heels, Jack wended his way to the back of the shop, his tin lantern casting off shards of gold light. He stepped over a heap of broken Grecian urns and edged past a wooden sarcophagus that leaned against the wall and stared with knowing eyes of lapis lazuli. They started up a narrow staircase that Travis, in all his visits to the Magician’s Attic, had somehow never noticed before.