by James Kahn
Tangina, who was the same height as the boy, looked him in the eye with the comradeship of human frailty. “Me, too.” She smiled.
“And so am I,” added Steve, lest Robbie fall under the false notion that fear was the province of women and children. “But being brave is doing what you’ve got to do, despite how scared you might be. Understand?”
“Yeah, Dad,” said Robbie. “I’ll be brave.”
“Good,” whispered Steve, and hugged his son with the love of a man afraid he was about to be remembered fondly.
Diane took Carol Anne’s shoulders in her hands. “Honey, if you don’t want to do this, it’s okay. We can leave here now.”
“No, Mom—I want to.” She wasn’t sure why. It had to do with dreams and pasts, and like everyone else here, she knew it was just something she had to do.
“I love you very much,” Diane whispered proudly, almost crying. “Don’t ever forget that.” She wiped away a tear then for the innocent bravery of children. “Okay, everybody—let’s go.”
And so they went. Deeper into the cavern, Tangina in the lead, Diane bringing up the rear.
Massive old support beams balanced the earth above them as they wound to the next lower level. Here and there disintegrating corpses, half-embedded, reached out at them, eternally imploring. Carol Anne clung to her mother, Robbie was wide-eyed and tried to walk the way he imagined a man was supposed to walk in such a situation.
Steve suddenly had a funny sensation, like prickles at the back of his neck. He looked left and saw, to his dense horror, a pictogram on the wall: the figure of a bending man, arms akimbo, a snake curling out of his mouth.
The image echoed nauseatingly through Steve’s soul. He knew intimately the story being recorded here: here, how many centuries ago, a man had been invaded by the Beast and was spewing the thing out again. Just as Steve had done.
He shivered, steadied himself against the wall, labored his breathing for a few seconds. Diane came up to him, put her hands on his shoulders. “You okay?” she said.
He nodded but remained pale. He’d come so close, alone with his bottle, to total annihilation; and now, together, they’d come so far.
He shook off his chill and motioned that they should continue.
The path dipped down, became muddy—this area had been filled with water a few days ago, pumped out by the excavation crew. Now it was a slippery depression. Tangina led the Freelings up its far side, where it opened on a large cave full of skeletons.
This was the chamber Taylor had found. Scores of mummified corpsers, groping up a rise toward the silted-over carcass of a single man, grinning back down on this congregation with a soul of pure evil.
Diane stared up at the laughing cadaver with a sickening coming-together of her memories, visions, dreams. Her breathing grew shallow; shudders took hold of her body.
Steve grabbed her. “Diane? You okay?”
Tangina ran up. “What is it? What’s the matter, Diane?”
“Diane, say something,” said Steve.
“Mom?” Carol Anne called weakly.
Diane took a step back—back away from the figure on the mound. “It’s horrible,” she whispered intensely.
“What is?” said Tangina.
“They’re all . . . they’re all dying here . . .” Diane murmured.
“How?” Tangina urged.
“They . . .” She suddenly saw it all—these skeletons became young, alive people to her inner vision, their faces pleading, their hands beseeching the man on the mound, Henry Kane. He was smiling at her now, just the way he’d smiled yesterday on her front porch.
She described her vision. “They . . . they lock themselves in this cavern because he tells them the end of the world is coming . . .”
Kane placed his hand on the face of the woman reaching up to him, tears of joy streaming from her eyes. “You’re not dying here!” said Kane. “You’re not!”
Diane stared into the depths of her trance. “But the day he predicted for the end comes and goes,” she said, as if it were happening right then. “And a new day begins . . .”
Kane raised his arms to the congregation. Candles flickered in the small cavern, his underground cathedral. “Follow me to a better place,” he enjoined them. “Don’t fear. Your little ones are surrendering to me. Look at them. They’ll be reborn into a better world with me! Follow their lead. This is a beautiful day. A joyous day. Come with me to God!”
Diane continued narrating softly: “But Kane won’t let them leave. He tells them the earth has been spoiled . . . and they believe him.” She began to weep. “They begin too suffocate. No air in here. Crying . . . begging for mercy . . .”
Children gasping for air. One by one, the votive candles flickered and died. The faithful slumped. Only Kane remained erect, charged by the power of his mastery over them.
“The children are falling!” cried Diane, and suddenly Carol Anne saw it, too: the anguish of the strangling spirits, confused children, sick for air.
“Mom, they need help!” Carol Anne shouted, trying to make her mother do something as those children of two centuries earlier had begged their parents to do something.
One by one, they dropped, tears streaking their faces, tongues lolling out the sides of their mouths—dropped to the cold earth. Some hugged their children; some tried to claw their way to freedom, too late. Kane stared on, triumphant.
Diane’s voice was getting weaker, as if her own oxygen were being cut off. “Everyone . . . everywhere confused, hurt, lost beyond words . . . reaching out for help that never came . . .” She turned her head to stare directly at Kane with a loathing that penetrated the grave. “Because they worshipped him,” she muttered.
At that, the ground began to tremble. Diane’s vision of Kane—and Carol Anne’s vision—reached up his arm and pointed his terrible finger at Carol Anne.
But then it wasn’t their vision anymore; they were back in the unsealed cavern, surrounded by skeletons, and it was the mummified body of Kane lifting its bony hand to point accusingly at them.
The trembling of the earth increased as a hurricane wind vented through the cave. All at once a blinding light burst behind Kane’s corpse, sucking it into a vortex at its center. The wind roared like a wounded animal.
Tangina backed away in terror. This was it, the opening to the astral plane, the dimension that she’d tried for so long to avoid at all costs and that had then been denied her by her own blindness. “It’s happening!” she yelled over the racket. “Maybe we should run . . .” Maybe Steve would make her leave. Maybe she wouldn’t have to . . .
“No!” shouted Steve. “We’ve got to stay!”
“Steven?” Diane groped for him. She, too, was wavering.
He grabbed her hand tightly. “No!” he bellowed loud enough for Kane to hear on the other side.
The light grew brighter yet, flooding the cave, making the seekers avert their eyes.
“Diane?” Steve yelled, pulling her close.
She hugged him. “I’m with you!”
The light flared, unbearably bright, like the center of a magnesium flame . . . and then went out. The wind stopped; the earth stilled.
Tangina picked up her flashlight and turned it on. Before her stood Steve and Robbie.
Diane and Carol Anne were gone.
Steve turned in circles. “Oh, my God . . . where’s Diane? Where’s my baby?”
And then Carol Anne’s disembodied voice, so chillingly familiar in character that Steve knew in an instant where it was coming from: “Dadddddy! Hellllllllllllp meeeeeeee!”
It was coming from another dimension.
Steve began banging his fists against the stone walls, searching helplessly for the portal to the astral plane. But it was closed again. “Diane!” he shouted. “Carol Anne! Where are you?!”
“Come back to us!” screamed Robbie.
“Keep talking to them!” Tangina urged. “Don’t lose contact!” She felt heartsick. She could have entered the e
ther with them, but she didn’t, frozen with fear of what lay in wait for her.
Steve turned on her angrily. “What the hell do you mean!? We’ve lost contact! They’re gone!”
“Don’t argue!” she yelled back. “Just keep talking to them, before they drift too far!”
“Talk to us, Carol Anne,” Steve called. “Diane, do you hear me?”
From far, far away came his wife’s voice, filtered by the membrane that separated the two universes. Hellllp meeee! Steven, pleassse! We’re losssssst!”
Steve shook Tangina. “There’s got to be a way over! We’ve got to go to them. Now! Help us, damn it!” He’d never trusted her completely, not even when Diane had; but now he didn’t trust her at all. For all he knew, she was an accomplice in this madness.
“I don’t know how, Steven,” she said, quaking. “I’m sorry . . . I don’t know.”
But then they heard another sound. A droning, rhythmic, atonal chanting that was at once eerie and familiar. It was Taylor’s voice.
“Taylor?” Steve whispered.
It was the sound of hope.
They followed the sound down two sloping tunnels that widened into another cave entrance. There they found Taylor stoking a small ritual fire, surrounding the blaze with a length of rope he’d laid on the ground.
As they rushed up to him he threw something into the firepit. Flames leaped high, licking the low ceiling of the cavern. He stared deeply into the fire and spoke without greeting: “I can see her. This is the way in”—he appeared to be entranced—“but I’m not sure it’s the way out.” His face was painted dark green—the color of the inner earth—with white lightning running from his eyes and down his cheeks, denoting the source of his power.
“Is she all right?” pressed Steve.
“We have work to do,” Taylor rumbled, ignoring the question. He continued glowering into the fire and began to chant.
After Taylor had left Steve at the truck he had walked many miles in the desert, looking for a sign. He turned north at two scorpions fighting, then east at a dry water-hole in the shape of a goat horn. He gathered up a handful of buffalo grass, which he stuffed in his shirt. And finally he came to what he was looking for, though he hadn’t known it until he had seen it.
Lying in the sparse shade of a tall cactus was the bleached skeleton of a burro. A cracked leather harness lay stuck in the sand, connected by a frayed rope to the rusted-through remains of a small iron ore wagon.
Taylor approached the scene delicately, almost reverently. He had no doubt he’d find the miner’s skeleton nearby, but he wasn’t interested in that, nor in the pouch of rich ore the miner possibly still clutched to his bones. Taylor was interested in the rope.
The connection. The thing that connected laborer to burden, animal to iron, wildness to civilization. The thread that wove two things into one, making a pattern, a harmony. The connector. The thing that binds.
Gently he untied the rope from the harness and the cart. It was so thin in parts that it shredded in his fingers. He coiled carefully what was left. He cut his thumb on the jagged metal of the hitch-up, but rather than close the wound, he let it bleed freely into the rope. When it finally clotted on its own, Taylor pressed it to the dust to seal it.
He cut a wedge out of the cactus with his knife and sucked the morsel for water.
Then he set off walking again.
By late afternoon he reached one of the mesas where the Anasazi had lived. Cliff dwellings built into the rock face, they’d been empty for many centuries, since that magic race of people had died. Taylor would draw on some of their magic.
He sat in the middle of the floor of a small room with good spirit and started a fire. By the light of the fire and the lowering sun, he skinned his rattlesnake, making a good meal of the meat.
Next he cut the skin into fine, long strips and spread them out on the floor beside the mat of sweat-soaked buffalo grass he’d carried in his shirt and the length of blood-stained desert rope.
Then he unraveled the rope.
And then he began to weave.
Weaving was a form of meditation to Taylor. A way to speak with his Kachinas, to see patterns, to prepare for great tests. He had been a rug weaver before he was a Snake Priest, before he was a warrior, even before he was Taylor. Weaving was his oldest Way, and it brought him the most harmony.
He wove the ribbons of snakeskin in intricately with the bloody rope fibers and the stringy, tough filaments of grass; the knowledge of the weaving was in his fingers, freeing his mind to travel over things past and future.
Henry Kane approached him with a splendiferous smile. “Ben Lagou!” he called. “Are you ready?”
“Born ready,” he replied. Ben Lagou raised his concertina and began to play as Kane brought the bow down on his fiddle and Davey banged away on the little triangle.
“Ohhhh, Madeleine,” they sang. And the congregation danced.
They were Cajun, many of them; but others belonged as well—Appalachians, Texicans. And former members of a variety of religions were there: Catholics, Baptists, voodooists, Jews.
But all were here to follow Kane. At the moment, to follow him in the reel he played on his fiddle; tomorrow, to follow him to the edge of the earth, if necessary. To seek utopia.
He’d promised no less.
And so they went. Kane in the lead, with Ben Lagou at his right hand, and a hundred Faithful close behind. Up through Texarkana, across the badlands, down into New Mexico.
The heat began to take its toll. And the Apache, of course. The year was 1837.
Some of the Faithful broke faith, straggled behind in Matamoros, Santa Fe, Muskrat City. Lagou never doubted, though; he saw the fire in Kane’s eye.
Arizona, Nevada, down through Death Valley—the salt flats. Devils Postpile—and finally to California. Land of redemption.
They came to an area of rolling green hills. The Mexicans who lived nearby called it Cuesta Verde. A small river ran through one of the ravines beside a series of caves; it was here that Kane announced the long-awaited utopia, so it was here his party rested.
All might have been well but for the discovery that one of the caves was already occupied by a small, non-hostile clan of Indians—hunter-gatherers who used the shelter during the winter months. They were perfectly willing to share the accommodations with Kane’s group. Kane, unfortunately, was having none of that; these savages were not believers.
“Henry,” Lagou said, “let them stay. They are peaceful people.”
“They are barbarians,” said Kane, “and will but fog the spirits of our brethern. They must go, for this is our utopia.”
So Kane armed himself and a dozen of his men and ran the Indians out of their cave shelters, at some cost to life.
That was when Lagou first noticed the change in Kane’s eyes.
He said nothing, but he watched. Winter turned to spring. Crops were planted, trees felled to build small homes. There was a drought. A few more followers left, to head further west on their own.
Kane began holding seances.
Lagou protested.
“The Lord works in strange ways,” said Kane, “His wonders to perform.”
Kane began demanding that the women visit him at night or he would send a flood.
The Faithful hesitated, and there was a flood.
“My wrath is swift,” he scolded.
They sent their women to him.
Then he demanded that their children visit him at night, or he would send fire.
The women protested, and a brushfire swept through the valley, destroying crops and houses.
They sent him their children.
Lagou denounced him. They fought, and Lagou beat him senseless.
But that night, to ease his own bruises, Lagou bought a bottle of tequila from a traveling drummer. And at the bottom of the bottle was a worm . . .
Ben Lagou transformed that night before the eyes of the company. In the light of a roaring bonfire he became a winged
serpent that first mutilated and then ate one of the dogs. Then he changed into a powerful man with the head of an elk, with antlers that grew before their eyes, twisting and entwining anyone in their path, wrapping around people’s throats, suffocating them . . .
And then the elk-man doubled over, writhing in pain, and changed back into Ben Lagou, gagging and shaking . . . and suddenly he was vomiting this snake-thing, this serpent, this gelatinous creature like an aborted calf . . .
And it slithered off into the caves.
The next day Kane called them all into his cave and sealed it off, that they might all follow him Beyond. He proved to them that he had been right, that Lagou was the evil one; hadn’t they seen Lagou work his devil ways the night before, shifting shapes in the firelight?
They believed Kane.
And as the air in the sealed-off cave was gradually used up they all died.
Only Ben Lagou survived, sleeping outside where no one would go near him.
He wandered off, keeping his dark secret with him.
But the Indians had seen. They’d continued living invisibly in the surrounding hills, and they’d witnessed everything that happened. They moved back into the caves that winter and drew the story on the cave walls—the story of the man with the elk’s head, the man who spewed the serpent from his mouth.
Lagou died, but his spirit later filled the person of Wilson Jones; and when he died, Sleeping Bear of the Comanche; and when he died, Moonshadow Kelly. And each of them spent his life in pursuit of an evil presence never found, because the spirit of Henry Kane slept, sealed, undisturbed . . .
Until the spirit of Ben Lagou filled the man known as Taylor, and the crypt of Kane was jostled by the excavations of Cuesta Verde Estates, and Kane’s taste for little girls was aroused by the innocent Carol Anne.
And all these crossings of the threads of so many lives had finally come together into the knot that ended the weave, fixing the pattern eternally . . . even as Taylor’s own fingers were knotting the end of the sorcerer’s rope he’d woven into a magical design.
Taylor pulled on the rope. The weaving was finished. Strong. Ready.
“Hey, man, you live here, or you just paid by the Department of the Interior to hang out and look authentic?” This was followed by mixed laughter, some embarrassed, some stoned.