Ancient Enemy

by Michael McBride

  I took the object I’d removed from the ration pouch from my pocket and held it in my palm, hoping to draw inspiration from it. I pocketed it again and kept moving. With as flat as the mesa was, I could only think of one place where I could be certain the water would drain, and that was into the valley below, where a narrow seasonal stream, all that was left of the great river that carved it, still flowed.

  “It’ahlo,” I said and Yanaba slowed to a halt.

  I clapped her on her flank and stood up in the saddle. Looked over the treetops as far as I could see in all directions. To the south, the break in the trees coinciding with the edge of the mesa was readily apparent. The same to the east. The transition seemed the most gradual to the west, where the forest grew denser and the skeletal branches of the aspens, birches, and poplars peeked through the overlapping branches of the evergreens. That was definitely where I’d find the richest soil, and presumably the mesa’s watershed.

  Yanaba gave a huff of impatience and I dropped back into the saddle with at least some idea of where to begin my search.

  The snow grew deeper and the gray wood of the dead trees faded behind me. I welcomed the gentle breeze that ruffled the pine needles and caused them to fall to the ground around me. The shade was dramatically cooler and only served to remind me that time continued to pass as the shadows shortened. Yanaba’s hoof beats became softer as the soil grew deeper and grasses peeked out from the accumulation. The hard layer of stone remained beneath, though. I know little about farming crops, but I was confident that if some of these trees were knocked down to clear space, the soil here would probably be deep enough for something like maize to take root.

  There wasn’t much of a slope to the ground, at least not where I was now. I could see where it dipped down into the valley ahead, though. I checked the rawhide map. I couldn’t pinpoint where the pit house should have been, but it appeared to be somewhere in this general vicinity.

  Yanaba slowed to a trot and I let her choose our path as I looked around, through the gaps between trees and beneath their branches. Generations of trees had undoubtedly lived and died since this area was last inhabited and could easily have grown from the dirt the wind blew over the ruins themselves, which wouldn’t have been much of a stretch considering the nature of the buildings.

  We wended northwestward through the forest for what felt like an eternity, until I finally saw the first indication that anyone had ever been here before me. What I initially mistook for a random pile of rocks was actually the remains of a fallen wall that had once been maybe two feet tall. I climbed down and inspected it. The majority had been reclaimed by the earth, although if I used my imagination, I could see where two parallel rows mortared with mud had once been used to funnel the runoff down into the lowlands to my left.

  I led Yanaba by her rope as we walked in a wide circle around the ancient canal. It was nearly impossible to focus on anything beyond the time slipping rapidly away.

  There was a depression in the ground, maybe a hundred feet to the northeast, from which a clump of scrub oak grew. Had Yanaba not stopped to nibble at the grasses growing nearby, I might not have recognized its distinctly circular shape.

  It was maybe ten feet in diameter, not nearly large enough to accommodate a family, but definitely large enough to serve as one of the storage rooms traditionally built behind the main dwelling. I kicked at the snow and dirt near the edge until I exposed the petrified nub of one of the posts that had once supported the roof.

  I was getting close. The problem was I had no idea where I was in relation to the main living quarters.

  I left Yanaba to graze and pushed my way through the shrubs and the branches of the trees, watching the ground for any sign of the other storage rooms or pits or the circumference of the pit house itself.

  I found another circular depression fifteen feet to the west and a third maybe that far again past it. A typical farmstead from what was known as the Basketmaker III Era featured a trio of storage buildings set behind a pit house, which utilized an antechamber for its entrance on the opposite side. The main dwelling had to be either to the north or the south of the middle storage room, so that’s where I started. I stood in the center and tried to think about it logically, rather than blindly crashing through the underbrush. Again. My forearms were scratched to hell and my socks were sopping wet and riddled with briars. I even had a stinging laceration at the corner of my eye from an infernal pine branch.

  From experience, I knew that the snow took longer to melt to the south of any structure as a consequence of the shadow it cast, so it stood to reason that anyone living out here for any length of time would know well enough to take advantage of the additional sunlight to the north in the winter, especially when it came to maintaining the heat in an underground dwelling. With that in mind, I walked pretty much due north toward a thicket of birches that grew so close to one another that the ground beneath them must have remained in perpetual shadow from spring through the first snowfall. Their thin trunks grew at every conceivable angle, from tangles of grass frosted with ice and the moldering leaves of seasons past. The thicket itself was an anomaly. Water birches tended to grow in the nutrient-rich soil closer to the bottoms of the canyons. This thicket was not only out of place, but oddly circular in shape, thanks to the extra soil that had accumulated in the bottom of the pit house, the shape of which was still somewhat apparent if you knew what you were looking for.

  I crouched and peered into the maze of thin trunks. Nothing struck me as out of the ordinary, with the exception that here were ruins of potential archaeological significance that no one had excavated. I crawled into the thicket, sweeping my hands through the frozen detritus as I went. I still didn’t have the slightest clue what I was supposed to find or how I was supposed to use the object from the ration pouch, but the pit house had been where the map said it would be, so I had no doubt that its purpose would be revealed to me soon enough. I passed what I guessed was the middle of the main dwelling, where somewhere beneath the roots and dirt was the firepit that would have vented through a hole in the roof, wherever it was now. Large stones protruded from the snow, presumably the remainder of the deflector wall that helped funnel the smoke up through the gap in the roof and away from the inhabitants.

  It was almost impossible to believe that anyone had ever lived here. My historical frame of reference was limited to schoolbooks, in which the recorded history of America started with the European Conquest. Everything before that—even the stories of my own heritage—had an unreal quality to them, like fairy tales. These ruins predated the cliff dwellings by hundred of years. How many other civilizations were buried beneath our feet where—?

  Thump.

  I stopped crawling.

  I’d felt something give underneath my right hand. I raised it to appraise the ground, then pressed down again.

  Thump.

  I brushed aside the accumulated snow, dead leaves, and pine needles with both hands until I revealed a square piece of wood, eroded and warped by so many years in the elements. I continued sweeping until I exposed all four sides. It was almost perfectly square and fitted into a wooden frame made of even older timber. The side closest to me had hinges rusted with age, while the opposite side had a dirty and discolored padlock looped through the latch.

  I sat up and removed the object from the ration pouch. It was an old, burnished brass key. I turned it over and over in my hand before sliding it into the lock. It took a little more force than I expected to make it turn, but it disengaged easily enough.

  I leaned back onto my haunches and stared down at the unlocked hatch for nearly a full minute, contemplating the significance of what I was about to do. My grandfather hadn’t saved the artifacts on his shelf all these years because they’d been of sentimental value; he’d saved them to pass on to his heir when the time was right. The gravity of the responsibility he bestowed upon me was paralyzing.

  It hit me just how much my grandfather knew about what was happening
during the night and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d knelt where I did now a lifetime ago.

  I flipped open the latch, drew a deep breath, and raised the hatch.

  SIXTEEN

  I stared down into darkness that sparkled with motes of dust. The smell that blossomed from it was unlike anything I’d smelled before. It was more than merely the scent of age; it was the scent of another age, of a time when the air was as different from how it was now as the people were. There was the time-old scent of wood smoke and dust and aged timber. Whatever had once been down there of a biological nature had long ago reached its final stage of decomposition and become a part of the communal whole. I imagined bowls full of dried fruits and grains, textiles made from animal hide, and food stores withered to the consistency of jerky. I wondered whose house it had once been and how my grandfather had come to be in possession of the key that unlocked the secrets of a chamber hidden below its earthen floor, from an age when construction had been almost exclusively aboveground.

  Cool air blew into my face when I leaned over the edge. I had the distinct sensation of depth below me, but couldn’t tell how far down the bottom was, only that I wasn’t about to drop blindly down into the darkness.

  Fortunately, I’d come better prepared today. In addition to the rattle, I’d packed a flashlight, my hunting knife, some hard-boiled eggs, and bottled water into Yanaba’s saddlebag.

  She was still grazing where I left her and seemingly oblivious to my presence as I relieved her of the saddlebag and the rope. I ate one of the eggs while I crawled back under the trees, dragging the bag behind me. I already had the flashlight in hand when I reached the hole.

  A patina of dust covered what looked like a bare stone floor far below and motes danced in the column of light. It was maybe fifteen feet down to where I saw the broken remains of what must have once been a ladder. I pictured myself contorted and impaled on them and looked around for the sturdiest birch trunk I could find. I tied Yanaba’s rope around it and dropped the loose end into the hole, where it unraveled and swung maybe five feet above the ground. It wasn’t a perfect arrangement by any means, but it would have to do. I just prayed the knot held.

  I tucked the rattle under my waistband and dropped the knife down ahead of me so I didn’t end up accidentally stabbing myself with it if I fell, which was the kind of thing I could count on with the way my luck was running.

  I crouched over the hole and tugged on the rope as hard as I could. Jerked it and yanked it and watched the knot for any indication it might slip. The reality was simple: If it didn’t hold and I fell, I would die down there, whether from a broken neck or starvation. Only my grandfather knew where I was and he had no way of communicating that information.

  My heart pounded as I drew the rope to me, wrapped my ankles around it, and slid gingerly over the edge. Braced my elbows on the wooden cribbing until I found the courage to begin my descent.

  The flashlight beam barely penetrated the shadows lining the circular walls. I could just make out the texture of stacked stones fitted together in no apparent pattern. My elongated shadow twirled beneath me in what little light passed through the opening in the ceiling, where I feared the wooden edge would saw through the rope. The sooner I was on the ground the better.

  The beam traced the rocky floor. It was covered with dirt, chunks of sandstone, and splintered wood.

  And bones.

  When I reached the end of the rope, I swung to avoid the ruins of the ladder, and dropped down to the ground. Turned in a complete circle.

  The cold, dark space reminded me of a kiva, only those came hundreds of years later for the Anasazi. It appeared to have been built into an existing subterranean formation, which accounted for its unusual size and depth. I wondered if this was part of the original structure or, more likely, something retrofitted under the obsolete pit house long after its abandonment. It reflected the same style of construction as the cliff dwellings of the Late Pueblo III Era, the final days of the Anasazi.

  The roof was reinforced with planed pine trunks in a linear pattern and appeared to be the same kind of wood as the broken ladder scattered around my feet. It was so cold that my teeth started to chatter.

  The hearth was built directly into the ground. It was roughly four feet in diameter and ten inches deep. There was carbon scoring on both it and the deflector wall standing over it, which was roughly five feet tall and composed of sandstone bricks. The sipapu—the symbolic portal through which the Hisatsinom first entered this world—was roughly six inches wide, four deep, and set right in the center of the room.

  To my left was a concentration of skeletal remains. The bones were disarticulated, but remained largely in anatomic position, as though the body to which they belonged had been left to decompose where it fell. A long spear rested eternally just outside of its reach. The archaeologists called it “abandonment context,” meaning there had been no attempt to bury the remains. There were no grave goods, nor did there appear to be any form of severe trauma to the bones. At least not that I could tell.

  There were more bones in the recess behind the smoke deflector, similarly abandoned, only what was left of the body appeared to be in fetal position, as though the man’s final act in life had been an attempt to hide behind the small wall. There was a spear beneath his body; its spearhead was long gone, leaving behind the notches to which I assume it had been attached. It had less dust on it than the remains, as though at some point someone had picked it up, only to set it back down again. The closest ventilation tunnel had been plugged with stacked stones, the majority of which had toppled inward.

  I shined my flashlight at the wall as I approached another set of remains. It was composed of sandstone bricks mortared together with mud that had crumbled to dust over time. Recesses had been built into the wall, maybe five feet from the ground, and looked to be about the right size for someone to sleep in. Or be interred. At the very back of one, bows and arrows and spears were buried beneath countless lifetimes’ worth of spider webs and dust. The skeleton on the ground beneath it was still articulated, but again abandoned. It was sprawled prone in an awkward position, its torso twisted to the left. Near its outstretched hand was what looked almost like a cross with a hole in the center that I imagined must have been used like a boomerang. Again, it had less dust on it than the body.

  Beside it was another, this one disarticulated and on its right side. Based on the positioning of the bones, it looked to me like he had died covering his head with his arms.

  There was a midden heap nearby, petrified and chock-full of remains. I guessed there had to be enough bones there to form at least two additional people, maybe more. I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around the fact that some of these people had been left to rot where they died, while others had been picked apart and their bones thrown in with the rest of the refuse. Not until I saw the distinct teeth marks on the long bones where I could tell they’d been gnawed, anyway.

  And slowly the picture started to come together.

  The fact that the other two ventilation ducts had been barricaded from the inside all but confirmed it.

  This was some sort of underground safe house. These people had sealed themselves down here in the hopes of riding out a prolonged siege. They’d blocked every conceivable point of entry as best they could and hidden in the darkness for so long that they exhausted their supplies and were forced to resort to eating each other in order to survive, and even that had been for naught as whatever was hunting them ultimately found its way down through one of the ventilation shafts and broke through their barricade. The last days of these people had been filled with unimaginable terror, right up until the moment they were infiltrated and slaughtered.

  Legend spoke of the Anasazi as being the fiercest of warriors, yet these people had entombed themselves down here, either out of sheer cowardice or the grim understanding that they faced a foe they could not defeat.

  I turned and looked back at the bodies. Two of them had tried to
hide and the other two had tried to run. Neither of them had made it very far at all. I wondered if it was the smell of them cooking their companions that had summoned the predators. Not that it really mattered.

  I pondered how different this was from the House of Many Windows, where the children had been hidden while their families went to war against an ancient enemy, where they had huddled in the pitch black and waited for their killers to come for them after massacring the forces of their tribe. This must have come later, after the battles had ended and the survivors had taken to the ground, after the enemy had driven them from the dwellings high in the cliffs they had originally built with the intention of withstanding an attack. I thought of the Sun Temple with its fifteen-foot double-walls and fortified construction, perched in the most defensible position in this entire area, a last bastion of hope that was abandoned before it was completed. Or maybe because it simply hadn’t been completed in time.

  I imagined an enemy against which there was no prayer of victory coming out of the rock beneath their very feet, scurrying up the canyon walls, and over their pathetic fortifications. And I wondered why, if such an enemy actually existed, they weren’t still around now. How had something that eradicated an entire warrior tribe been driven back into the darkness?

  That was why my ancestors had left these bodies in this condition, why no one had gathered and buried the bones or shared the discovery with one of the universities. It was for this very reason…so someone like me could climb down here and make the connections on his own, so he could truly understand the kind of enemy against which he found himself pitted, an enemy that, until now, had been every bit as unreal as the myths that had been passed down through the generations, an enemy that had attacked his livestock with such speed and stealth that he hadn’t even seen it, let alone been able to raise a weapon in their defense.