Legion (Southern Watch Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  Franklin took a breath of the cool cave air, the still, stale smell permeating his nostrils and the taste of dust still hanging in his mouth, unspat. He took a step forward, his coat hanging from his hands like a protective shield before him as he advanced on the object in the middle of the room.

  The vase looked delicate, and it probably was. Franklin Dewitt was no archaeologist, but it looked to his eyes like a very old thing. How old, he wouldn’t even have cared to speculate, but along with old he associated “delicate,” and so he took his time approaching it—at least as much as Franklin ever took his time approaching anything.

  He wrapped the coat slowly around the neck of the vase, then tucked it around the wide middle and the smaller base. Whether it was some sort of Indian artifact or simply something that had somehow made its way to Indian country, he did not know. He treated it as though it were older still and more valuable than a Biblical scroll, cradling it in his arms as he lifted it from the pedestal.

  He waited in the quiet as he held it in his arms, listening for something, anything—a rumble in the mountain, skies to darken outside, rivers of blood to start running. Franklin’s breath caught in his throat for a second and he listened—

  Nothing.

  There was not a sound, not a whisper, no cataclysm at hand. Shrugging, he stooped, carefully snagging the wire handle of the lantern with his ring and pinky finger as he rose and started back toward the way out.

  “Arthur!” he shouted into the darkness ahead, “I think I got it!” Franklin could feel his eyes subtly bulge, his pulse quickening with the thrill of discovery after long weeks of digging. He had listened to the clink of the pickaxes against the rock with unceasing patience, over and over, and this was the moment of reward. He held the bundle of the vase in his hands, wrapped in his coat, the scratchy fabric between his fingers and the smooth pottery.

  Between him and what rested within the object itself.

  “Arthur!” Franklin called again. He stared straight ahead, wondering when the small passage they had carved would be illuminated. The sides of the cave tunnel crowded in around him as he made his way slowly, choosing his steps with care once more, the passage nowhere near as smooth as the carved circular chamber where he’d found the vase. “Arthur, I found it, damn your eyes! Tell me you didn’t choose this moment to go outside to relieve yourself.”

  The outline of the small passage he’d squeezed through appeared before him, faint shadows the only thing visible beyond. He peered but could not see, could not discern anything beyond a vague pinprick of light that suggested a lantern somewhere on the wall in the distance. The air was getting fresher as he drew closer to the hole in the rock barrier. The lantern light showed it plainly now; it was a pile of stones that was far wider at the base than at the top where Arthur had broken through and he’d climbed in.

  “Arthur!” Franklin called, struggling under the awkward heft of the bundle in front of him. “I’ve found it, Arthur, found the—curse you, you old dog.” He dropped his voice at the last, almost disbelieving. It was just like Arthur to choose this very moment, this very climactic moment, to take his leave for a break. The dust hung heavier in the air here than it had in the chamber behind him, and he stuck out his tongue once more and spat over the top of the bundle in his arms. The dusty, chalky taste in his mouth did not depart, though. But then, it never did, did it?

  Franklin reached the rise of the rocks ahead of him and paused, minding his footing even more carefully now. He felt unbalanced even though the vase only weighed a scant few pounds. He shifted it against his chest, the pottery pressed against his coat. The chilly cave air was still causing him to break out in goose pimples as though it were the first of morning.

  Franklin looked into the dark gap in the rock wall, trying to decide what to do next. “Arthur!” he snapped, raising his voice. “Arthur, I have it, will you come down here and—” He paused, listening, but heard nothing from beyond.

  For a moment he considered waiting, but that simply would not do.

  With great care, he climbed as far as he could up the incline of rocks that he’d slid down to land upon his head only moments earlier. He chose his steps carefully, and when he could go no further with the vase in his hands, he pondered how best to approach taking it the last few feet and writhing his way out the other side.

  “There’s nothing for it but to do it,” he said, feeling that itching sensation up and down his chest and back, that tickling fire within that urged him to action. He took a breath and then slipped a foot into the narrow passage awkwardly, bending his other knee.

  Franklin thumped his head on the ceiling of the cave and grunted as it reawakened the pain he’d inspired upon his landing. “Almighty!” he cursed, cringing, holding himself still as the warm blood trickled back down his scalp. His eyes were half-closed at this point from the stinging. A drip of sweat fell into his eyes and it burned.

  Franklin bent double, clutching the vase against his chest, the coat placed carefully between him and his prize. He felt a stab of fear as a rock shifted beneath his feet and he dropped an inch. There was a tearing feeling in his groin and he took a sharp breath, but his balance came back and he caught his breath again. His heart still hammered in his ears, though.

  “Arthur, I must warn you, I am of a mind to kill you when I get out of here,” Franklin said, holding himself still for a second before readjusting. He was reminded of climbing to the top of a church bell tower and then squeezing back down the hatch to the ladder, save for this was a horizontal maneuver, and he did not have gravity on his side nor the benefit of free hands.

  Franklin hugged the vase tight and backed himself even closer to the hole, sliding his leg through awkwardly. He hooked the leg on a rock inside the small tunnel and then gradually applied his weight. He felt more than a little foolhardy; it was not exactly a given that the rock would hold him, and should it fail in the midst of his efforts, it might well roll onto him, causing injury or death.

  Still, he tested it, slowly. It held, and he put a little more weight behind it, until finally he was entirely committed to it. Taking another slow breath, he shouted, “Arthur!” and waited five seconds without response before deciding to go on with it.

  Franklin bent entirely double and rested his left elbow on a rock. It pushed at his bone uncomfortably, and now he was half standing, half kneeling, with his left leg extended behind him to climb backward through the hole in the rock barrier. His right leg was aching at the groin where it creased to bend unnaturally far. He was practically in a position to eat his right kneecap if he wanted to, just give it a nibble through his dirty, scuffed-up breeches.

  Putting his weight on his left side, both the elbow and the foot hooked against the large stone, Franklin lifted his right leg and pushed it behind him, the vase still cradled in his arms like a baby wrapped in the coat. When he’d managed to get his right foot braced in the hole, he lowered his right elbow and found a suitable place to brace it as well. That done, he very slowly began to worm his way backward.

  “Oh, Arthur, you’d be so proud to see me now,” Franklin grumbled, his voice thick with umbrage for his partner. “Here I am, crawling ass-backwards through the cave tunnel because you couldn’t be bothered to follow after me or at least wait for me here, like a sensible person.”

  Franklin moved rearward an inch at a time, the sound of his clothes brushing hard against the rock and gravel. There was a sudden rattling as he set loose a small avalanche of pebbles down his left side. He took a breath that stuck in his lungs and halted his progress for a second, then exhaled and pushed back again, still clutching the vase tightly. It shifted in his arms and he held still for a long second, waiting for it to stabilize before moving again.

  The rough fabric of his coat was rubbing against his wrists, the coarse material like rough grains of sand pushed against Franklin’s skin. He couldn’t wait to get through this, to finish his crawl. His mind was already on loading up the vase, on getting on their mules a
nd getting back to Flagstaff, where they could catch a train to the east. They could be in Chicago in just a few days. After that, it’d be on to New York to deliver the thing, at which point they could get paid and consider this whole expedition behind them.

  That’d be a banner day. Franklin was certainly looking forward to it. Perhaps a little too much, in fact, because while his mind was on that, the side of the vase bumped against a rock that jutted out in the hole.

  The sound of pottery shattering stopped Franklin’s motion completely. He held utterly still, listening as the clay broke where it had hit the jutting piece of stone. He held it cradled in his arms, but the vase shifted, and he stared into the dark, barely lit by the lamp he’d left on the other side of the rock wall, as the pottery cracked and collapsed in on itself within the bounds of his coat.

  “No! NO!” Franklin screamed in the dark, and shifted in a frenzied hurry to try and stop what could no longer be stopped. The vase was broken, the damage done enough to completely destroy the entire structure of the thing, and it fell to pieces even as he tried his hardest to keep it together.

  Franklin shifted on the right and one of the larger pieces, the neck and mouth of the vase, freed from the weighty middle, came tumbling out of his coat. Franklin could feel it shift, and acted instinctively to try and save it. Working entirely from reaction rather than thought, he let go of the coat and grasped with bare fingers, dread and panic cramping his heart and stomach as he moved without consideration to catch the pieces that remained—

  And his fingertips brushed the cool pottery, unobstructed by the coat that had kept him from it before.

  The world went suddenly black around Franklin, and he could not see anything. The light that had been gleaming from the two lamps on either side of the tight passage in which he was trapped vanished as though they’d been snuffed suddenly by a stiff wind. The chill air grew suddenly warmer, and Franklin took a sharp intake of breath. He’d been on his belly a moment earlier, but now he had the disconcerting sense that he’d been suddenly turned upright without warning, that he was standing again, all the blood rushing out of his head.

  “Lord a-mighty,” Franklin breathed into the darkness.

  “Quite the opposite, in fact,” came a voice from the black, a faint pulsating light glimmering with each spoken word. The accent was peculiar, reminding him Franklin of a British fellow he’d once met in New York City. The cadence was slow, steady, and with a hint of drawl to put emphasis on some syllables. The effect was strange, but it gave the speaker’s voice a quality of ponderous thought, carefully punctuated.

  “Don’t go scaring the poor man,” came a second voice, this one almost mirthful. “He’s just had quite the jolt to his constitution.”

  “Who are you?” Franklin spoke into the dark, his skin feeling suddenly warm, almost flushed.

  “Mmm,” came the first voice, the sterner one. “Names. I think ours are nearly unpronounceable in English, aren’t they?”

  “As though we’d freely give them in any case,” said the second, amused. “Perhaps we should just go with the old standards.”

  “Perhaps, indeed.”

  “Very well, then,” the second voice said. “You may call me … William.”

  “I suppose then I shall once again go with Chester,” said the more serious, ponderous voice. Both sounded indubitably male, though.

  “Who in the blazes are you?” Franklin asked, feeling as though he were spinning around, trying to catch sight of the speakers, their words still pulsing with light.

  “I’m Chester.”

  “And I am William.”

  “That doesn’t help at all,” Franklin whispered under his breath, the prickle of fear dusting him.

  “How do we explain it, Chester?” came the more youthful voice, filled with genuine curiosity.

  “Hmmm …” Chester said, clearly giving it serious thought. “I think … well, there is a rather classical way that he’ll be able to understand, but I don’t think you’ll find it favorable given you don’t want to scare him.”

  “Ah, yes.” William’s voice seemed resigned, the light dimming. “That will have to do, I suppose, though it feels as though it could be a bit … cruel.”

  “Leaving him ignorant seems crueler, especially when things are now so radically different for the man,” Chester said.

  “Who are you?” Franklin asked, spinning in the dark, the world whirling around him, the light spots indicating Chester and William blurring in front of his eyes. It was getting harder to see, other spots seemed to be popping out like stars in the Arizona sky.

  “We are the speakers,” Chester said, “for a great congress of—”

  “You said you were going to explain it in the classical way.” William cut him off suddenly and with a hint of rudeness.

  “Being aware of your distaste for anything traditional, I was trying to be more accommodating,” Chester said primly.

  “Well, that would be a first,” William said. “And while I appreciate it—”

  “Speaking of firsts.” Chester said.

  “Just go with what we agreed on,” William said.

  Chester made a harrumphing sound in the darkness, the light vibrating. “Very well, then, have it your way—”

  “I’m asking you to do it your way, not mine—”

  “And I was willing to do it more like yours—”

  “What the blazes is going on here?” Franklin asked, feeling as though he might break out in a cold sweat at any moment.

  “You know the answer to that, don’t you?” Chester asked. “You touched a piece of the vase.” Franklin began to feel that sweat coursing down him, even though there was no temperature change to prompt it. “You know what that means to you, do you not?”

  “I—I don’t—” Franklin began.

  “Come now, my good man,” William said in a friendly manner, “you’re not some Johnny-Come-Lately, new to this sort of digging. You knew what you came for, after a fashion. You knew what the vase was, why not to touch it—or at least part of the reason not to.” The voice paused. “What was in the vase, Franklin?”

  “In its center?” Franklin asked, his own voice wavering. “Nothing.”

  “What was in the pottery?” Chester asked, drawling. “Come now, denial will fetch no favor here.”

  Franklin felt his hands shake, the spots of light penetrating the dark around him. “It was … said a …” his voice shook to match his hands, “… a demon was imprisoned in the clay.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear,” William said.

  “Indeed not,” Chester said in obvious agreement. “And you need not fear, Franklin, old boy.”

  “But you’re—you’re a demon,” Franklin said, bowing his head, his eyes closing in despair of their own accord. “And you’re—you’re here in my mind, now … in my body …”

  “I think you mean ‘we’ are,” Chester said sedately.

  “Very important to understand the distinction,” William said.

  “Two demons, then,” Franklin said, and the despair rose; he’d been careful, but plainly not careful enough. The desire to hurry through and secure the vase without Arthur’s help had cost him now. And it had cost him dear, for he knew that there was no easy way to remove—

  “Oh, heavens, no,” Chester said, lightly chuckling.

  “Two of us?” William asked. “Good grief.” The darkness pulsated with light as he crackled with airy laughter.

  Franklin stared into the dark, looking at the tiny pinpricks of light that suddenly started to grow larger. They truly did remind him of the stars in the sky, of the darkness of the night in the canyon, the cloudless sky beset by the faint glow of the heavens. “How … how many are you?”

  “I think this is the moment,” William said. “Go on, ‘Chester’ … with your tradition and all that …”

  “Your names are not Chester and William,” Franklin said with a sense that his mouth had gone as dry as the desert plains.

>   “Goodness no,” William said. “Tell the poor man.”

  “‘My name is Legion,’” Chester said, repeating the old verse that even Franklin knew, “‘for we are many.’” And the light blazed around him, the infinite stars shining brighter in the darkness.

  “We are the speakers for all of these,” William said. “The voice to the many.”

  “He doesn’t understand,” Chester said.

  “He doesn’t need to, at least not immediately,” William said.

  “What do you want with me?” Franklin asked.

  “I didn’t want anything with you,” Chester said, sounding more than a little cross. “But you broke our vessel, our home, and left us nowhere else to go. I would have been quite content to remain in the vase.”

  “I wasn’t content,” William said with what sounded like barely contained glee. “I consider it a blessing that you fumbled, that you rushed in where angels fear to tread.”

  “Why did you have to mention them?” Chester grumbled.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” William said, “and do try to stop being so sensitive. I can’t steer away from every word and common phrase that might offend your delicate self—”

  “Well, you could try—”

  “I do try, but it feels as though you’re getting touchier by the day—”

  “Oh, dear God, deliver me from evil,” Franklin mumbled. The light of both speakers seemed to swivel to him, as though they pivoted and covered him with lamplight.

  “‘Evil’?” Chester rumbled.

  “See, now even that offends you,” William said, “and you just quoted a verse to him whilst proclaiming our identity that’s in their holy book and clearly associates us with what they consider the ‘bad side.’”

  “What are you people?” Franklin moaned.

  “We are not people at all,” Chester said.

  “There you go getting offended again,” William said.