by James Kahn
And suddenly he was back in the kiva, sweating, facing Taylor.
He smiled shakily. “What was in that pipe?”
Taylor looked grim. “Now that you have the power of the smoke, you must take your family back to Cuesta Verde.”
“What!?” This jolted Steve back to reality fast. He never wanted to hear the name Cuesta Verde, let alone go back there. Back to the place that marked the crumbling of his life.
But he was strong. That feeling was still with him, if he could only hold on to it.
Taylor continued. “The spirit that haunts you is stalking you. You are out here lost in the wilderness like a rabbit. The Evil One knows where you are, how to find you, and what your weaknesses are. Your best chance is to surprise him and confront him off guard in his own lair. Like a lion.”
“I don’t know, Taylor. Diane and the kids—”
“They are your strength. And you are theirs. Do not use them as your excuse, for together your power is many times what it is alone. Together, you can defeat this Thing.”
“You are alone,” argued Steve.
“I am Navajo,” he said simply. Then he picked up the headless snake and draped it around his shoulders once more.
They climbed up the ladder, back out to the purity of the crucible, and walked to the truck.
Taylor said, “The actions you take will be based not on logic but on intuition.”
“What does that mean?”
“What it means is of no importance. You must ask, What does it feel?”
What it felt like to Steve at the moment was out of control. “Are things desperate, Taylor?”
“What you see as desperate, I see as inevitable.” If he meant this as a reassurance, it didn’t work. He shrugged, in any case, and said, “I’ve done all I can. I must leave you now.” He began walking into the desert.
“Hey, wait a minute—where are you going?”
“You take the truck back to Phoenix, to your family. They need you now. You are strong, you can help them now. For me, I have my own journey.”
Whereupon he walked over a steep rise and out of sight.
Steve had had all the lessons he was going to have for today. Now it was time for homework.
Tangina walked to the front door, accompanied by Diane. The sun was low, and Steve wasn’t back yet, and Diane wished Tangina weren’t leaving. She told her so.
Tangina smiled sadly. “I want you to know somethin’. I’m afraid.” Her voice got so quiet. “That’s the real reason I haven’t come sooner, and why I’m leavin’ now.”
“I . . . understand,” Diane tried.
“No, you don’t. But believe me when I tell you my fear would only ensnare you when you needed to be most bold. My fear is dead weight. It’s no good for me, and it would be disastrous to bring around you.”
“But you were so fearless,” Diane protested. “You guided us through hell.”
“You guided yourself. I was just takin’ tickets at the gate. And I’ve been undone by doubts ever since. That first time I told you your house was clean, and it wasn’t—that was the beginnin’ of the end for me. My dreams are distorted since then, I don’t read signs right; I don’t believe in myself anymore—and the Beast knows it. No, I’d be worse than useless to you now, because you trust me, and the Beast could use that to destroy you.” She opened the door.
“I still wish you wouldn’t go.”
“There’s somethin’ else you should know. The authorities are going to seal off the cavern—the one in Cuesta Verde under where the house used to be. The day after tomorrow. Health regulations,” she added with a sardonic smile.
Diane stooped down and hugged her. “Maybe that’ll end it all.”
Tangina didn’t push it. “Maybe,” she said.
“I’ll miss you.” Diane spoke as if she might never see the woman again.
“God bless, child.” Tangina returned the feeling, closing the door behind her.
Steve didn’t get home until eight. Taylor’s pickup broke down just outside Flagstaff, so after calling home to assure Diane he was fine but late, he hitched a ride to the bus station.
So he was road-weary when he walked in the front door, but still pumped up from his day with Taylor—the baking sun, the closeness to the land, the power of the smoke, the power in himself. These things were with him, and he wanted to share them with his family.
His family sat glumly around the kitchen table, picking over three-day-old meat loaf.
Carol Anne and Robbie gazed out the back window to the area of the back yard where Taylor’s tent no longer stood. Diane welcomed him with a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, then settled back down to messing the meat around in the ketchup.
It had a significant dampening effect on Steve’s spirits, but he nonetheless tried to be the cheerleader. “Hey, come on, everything’s gonna be fine. Just because Taylor’s gone doesn’t mean anything bad is going to happen.”
“Right!” said Diane, trying to pitch in.
“We’re great,” he asserted. “We’re a great family.”
Robbie and Carol Anne looked unconvinced, giving the distinct impression they’d much rather have been part of Taylor’s family at the moment.
“What do you say,” Steve ran on, “tomorrow we play some miniature golf?”
No reaction.
“Well, then, how about bowling?”
No reaction.
“Okay, anybody up for a nature hike?”
No reaction.
Diane almost smiled, but she was too tired to work the right muscles. “Tangina was here today,” she said.
Steve squinted. “Yeah? She come to help out again?” Although she’d been instrumental in saving Carol Anne, Steve had never fully trusted her—he viewed her, rather, as a sorcerer’s apprentice who could unloose spells but not quite control them.
“Don’t take that tone, Steven. She didn’t have to come at all.”
He was starting to get annoyed. “Well, that would’ve been just fine. We can do just fine on our own, just fine.”
“Just like we’ve been doing just fine for the past four years,” Diane said irritably.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just nothing.” She stood up. “Let’s go, kids, time for bed.”
She took them upstairs quietly—they always got quiet when their parents got like this.
Steve went into the den, really steamed now. He’d been breaking his back for four years to get this family on track again—things were starting to come together, too—and then this sideshow palm reader shows up and Diane’s ready to follow her anywhere.
Women. They had no sense of the stresses a man was under to perform, to save, to win.
He flopped into the easy chair, grabbed the half-empty bottle of tequila from the table, and took a thirsty pull.
He was getting no support from Diane; that was the problem. The kids were in love with Taylor—sure, what kid wouldn’t be in love with a big, mysterious Indian?—and Diane was in awe of a psychic dwarf. Supposedly psychic. Steve had his doubts.
He took another long drink.
He stared into space, swirling the bottle. Swirling, the worm at the bottom of the bottle almost seemed to move, as if it were swimming through the currents of the liquor.
So here was Steve, alone again—as usual. Taylor gone, Tangina gone. Abandoned by everyone when the going got rough. When the going gets rough, the rough get loaded, he thought slyly. He had another drink. He looked around the room.
Toys cluttered the floor. Stuffed animals, software, robots, cars, dolls, puzzles . . . and the toy phone.
He studied the phone. He thought about it. Don’t use logic, Taylor had said. Use intuition. He looked around to make certain he wasn’t being watched. “Why not?” he muttered to himself.
He picked up the receiver and listened.
Nothing.
There had to be a way to work this thing out. Anybody could be convinced to listen to reason with the
right argument.
Phone in hand, he walked out the back door and into the garage. And there, in the cluttered darkness, he spoke softly into the mouthpiece.
“Hello? Hello? Listen, if anybody’s there . . . I mean, Jess . . . or anybody . . . please listen to me. This is Steve Freeling. You’ve been trying to . . . make contact. Is anybody there? Hello?”
No response. Only the silence of the garage, the loneliness of the night.
Steve suddenly felt foolish. A grown man sneaking make-believe conversations on a toy phone. Really dumb.
He tossed the phone in a corner and resumed his post in the den, bottle in hand: now here was an inanimate object he knew how to have a conversation with. How do you do? he said silently to the golden liquor, bringing the bottle to his lips and tilting his head back.
A few more exquisite gulps flowed down his throat as the worm at the bottom slid along the upturned glass to the very mouth of the bottle—to Steve’s very lips—before he put it down again and the worm slid back to the bottom.
And the worm at the bottom, as if awakened, slowly opened a demonic eye and waited.
CHAPTER 7
Diane and Carol Anne were taking a bubble bath together upstairs, telling stories to each other to avoid the stories that kept playing inside their heads.
“So after Alice fell down the hole,” Carol Anne asked at one point, “why’d she drink from that bottle?” Carol Anne knew bottles were bad; her mother had told her so.
“Because it said ‘Drink me’ on it,” Diane explained.
“Oh” said Carol Anne. “Were they going to capture Alice and take her someplace bad?” She knew all about that story.
“Yes, but Alice gets home, remember?” That was the point in Diane telling this one again—to reinforce the conclusion for Carol Anne: Alice get home. Alice gets home.
“Mom, did she know why they wanted to hurt her?”
“No, I guess not, hon.” Why does anybody want to hurt anybody?
“Cuz I know,” Carol Anne volunteered.
“You know what, honey?”
“Why they’re here.” Her voice had become very small.
“Why, baby? Why are they here?”
“Cuz they don’t know where else to go,” said Carol Anne, and began crying.
Diane hugged her, tried to protect her from these visions and memories and dreams and demons, tried to guard her with the love of a mother whose child is in danger. “Baby, baby, don’t you worry, okay? Mama’s never gonna let them hurt you. Never.”
And all the while a mist was forming in the front yard, thickening here and then there into the shapes of human figures—spirit vapors that floated slowly toward the house in the treacherous night.
Steve took another hit on the bottle, asking the eighty-proof spirits to give him courage, to help him be strong.
They were the wrong spirits to ask.
As he tilted the bottle back further, wondering whether or not to finish it off, the worm slid to the lip, paused as Steve began his swallow, and then shot ahead, into his mouth. And down his throat.
Instantly, Steve sat up, dropping the bottle to the floor. His eyes went wide; his heart went cold; his hand went to his neck.
No! was his last coherent thought. What have I done?
He clutched his throat with both hands, trying to wrestle off his own head to get at the demon now inside him. But it was too late. He stood, kicking the bottle across the floor, knocking over the table lamp, stumbling to the kitchen counter, where he slumped and then rose again.
Only now his eyes were a little like moss as he softly began to sing, “He is in His Holy Temple . . .”
Then he smiled and stopped singing, listening instead to the voices he heard upstairs. Carol Anne and her mother.
He walked upstairs and into the bathroom, where Carol Anne had just finished getting into her pajamas. Diane was in the bedroom. He stared at the child with a craving, craven expression she’d never seen before, and it frightened her.
“You okay, Dad?” she asked.
“Sure, honey. I just wanted to give my little girl a hug.” He stooped down and picked her up, with a funny sound at the back of his throat, like a gurgle, that made her want to get down, to get away.
Diane came in, drying her hair. After a moment’s indecision, Steve reluctantly put Carol Anne down. “We’ll play later,” he said to her with a flat grin. “I just want to talk to Mom first, for a second. Alone.”
“Go dry your hair, honey,” Diane added from under the towel.
Carol Anne regarded her father strangely and left the room.
“Steven, what’s going on?” Diane said, walking back into the master bedroom. She sounded upset—she was upset, with Carol Anne so fragile, everything so crazy, Steve reeking of alcohol . . .
“I just wanted us to be alone,” said Steve. He came up behind her at the closet door and began to rub her neck. “That feel good?”
“Yes . . .” she said ambivalently. She wasn’t in the mood to feel good, though; she had too much on her mind.
“Good.” Steve continued, working his hands down lower on her back.
“But I want to get back to Carol Anne . . .” Diane tried to pull away gently.
Gently, he held her. “The kids are safe,” he whispered, his voice getting husky. He kissed her on the neck, brought his hands around to the front of her chest.
Diane twisted away. “Come on, not now.”
He got cold in a hurry. “Okay—when? When this . . . this whatever-it-is is out of our lives? What if that takes years? Huh? What should I do? Put the marriage on hold until then?” There was a viciousness to his tone she’d never heard before.
“Steven, please.” She winced.
“Hey, listen, I have needs, too, you know,” he kept hammering.
“Your needs seem to be fulfilled by the bottle tonight,” she countered.
He laughed, a hollow, hurtful laugh. “Oh, Diane. What are you doing now? Accusing me of being a drunk? Is that it?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” she said frostily.
“No?”
“No.” This was the last straw, though. She’d never seen this side of his alcoholism—it usually made him maudlin, or ineffectual, or even pathetic, but not brutal like this.
The last interchange had gotten loud enough to draw Carol Anne’s attention. She walked softly down the hall to spy at her parents’ bedroom door.
Steve was saying, “You don’t think I know what’s going on with you, is that it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Diane snapped.
“I know you so well,” Steve baited her. “I know what you’ve been thinking.”
“Spare me, Steven.” She was just about ready to walk.
“For instance, I know that the other day, the morning after your mother died, you remembered helping her plant flowers in the garden when you were seven . . . you saw it clearly.” He smiled almost vindictively at the stunned effect this change of tack had on Diane.
“Steven.” She blanched. “How did you know—”
“Because I’m smaaaaaart,” he mocked. And suddenly she heard a new change in his voice—a change to a register that was disturbingly familiar, but a little too high . . . or something. It made her look at his eyes. He kept on talking: “ ‘Mummy Jess, Mummy Jess,’ ” he mimicked. Then, angry again: “So sweet. That’s how I know these things.”
Carol Anne, peeking through the crack in the door, was growing more upset. But she wasn’t even remotely prepared for what she heard next.
Steven had never sounded so base. “You also wished we’d never given birth to Carol Anne,” he hissed. “You wished she’d never been born.”
Diane looked horrified and was utterly speechless. Steve continued. “Our troubles are because of her. You’ve thought that, haven’t you? You didn’t want Carol Anne.” His head turned slightly, to make sure Carol Anne was listening.
Diane walked around the bed. She just
couldn’t deal with this kind of abuse.
Steve followed her closely, though, whispering after her. “You’ve thought about it, you’ve thought about it,” he gloated.
That was all Carol Anne could take; her last refuge was self-destructing. Now she had . . . nothing. She ran back to her room, closing the door.
Steve cackled hoarsely.
Diane burst into tears, trying to run from this maniac she thought she knew. He caught her by the arm, though, and pulled her close. “See? I know you pretty well, don’t I?” He breathed heavily on her face. His breath was pungent, fetid. “So what about it?” he said suggestively. His thick hand roughly groped at her breast.
The thought of his hand on her now made her physically sick. She pushed him away. “Don’t touch me!” she shrieked.
He moved on her, raised his arm. But then a thought struck him, and he paused: Forget her, was his thought.
It was the child he wanted.
His lip curled. “I’m going to leave you. I’m going to leave you alone, Diane. That’s what you want, and that’s what you’re going to get.”
He turned and headed for the door.
And suddenly that’s just what she felt—all alone.
And she couldn’t do it all alone.
She didn’t know what had gotten into Steve, but he was probably just cracking up from the same stresses she was under. He was just coming unglued faster. More than ever, it seemed this was a time they had to draw together, not collapse. They’d made it through horrible times before—they could get through this one. They had to.
“Steven!” she shouted. “Damn you!” She ran up and grabbed his arm. “Steven, we’ve got to stick together. If we don’t—if we fall apart—it all falls apart.” He was ignoring her but moving toward the door at a slower rate. She kept talking, pleading. “I’m just human, Steven, just like you. I’m not perfect. And I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you, but . . .” But what? She didn’t know what else to say. He was pulling away from her, and she wanted to tell him it would all be okay, they’d work it out. “I love you,” she rasped.
He stopped cold, as if he’d been hit by a hammer.
She said it again. “I do, I love you, believe me.”