by Neil Gaiman
“How’n hell that dwarf spin straw to gold?” Horn said. He took a swig of hooch and belched.
“Magic, you jackass,” Calhoun said.
“Lil’ fucker was the spawn o’ Satan, that’s how,” Bane said.
“The king made her his queen an’ everthin’ was hunkum-bunkum for a while,” Ruark said. “Then, o’ course, along comes baby an’ who shows up to collect his due? She convinces him to give her until the dark o’ the moon to guess his name an’ call off the deal. So bein’ a cantankerous cuss, the feller agrees. He knows his name is so odd she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell o’ sussing it out.” He paused and finally looked up from his work and slowly met the wondering gaze of each man riveted to his words. “But that ol’ girl did cotton to the jig. She sent messengers to the four corners o’ the land, their only mission to gather a list o’ names. One o’ them men reported a queer sight he’d spied in a deep, dark mountain valley. The scout saw a mighty fire below and who danced ’round that blaze but a pack o’ demons led by the little gold-spinner hisself. The dwarf cackled an’ capered, boasting that his name was Rumpelstiltskin. He was mad as a wet hen when the queen turned the tables later on. He stomped a hole in the palace floor an’ fell into the earth. That was the end o’ him.”
“That’s a pretty happy ending, you ask me,” Miller said as he pondered the incongruity of camping in the remote mountains with a company of dog-faced loggers and listening to one of them butcher the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale.
“Well, that part about the demons jumpin’ ’round the fire an’ calling up the forces o’ darkness, some say they seen similar happenins in these hills. They say if’n you creep along the right valley in the dead o’ night ’round the dark o’ the moon you’ll hear ’em singin’ an’ chantin’.”
“Hear who?” Calhoun said.
Ruark kind of smiled and shook his head and said no more.
“I’m turnin’ in,” Horn said and jumped to his feet. “Ain’t listenin’ to a bit more o’ this nonsense. No siree Bob.” He stomped a few feet away and rolled out his blanket and climbed under it so only the crown of his cap and the barrel of his rifle were showing.
“Too bad your mama ain’t here to tuck you in and sing a lullaby,” Stevens called.
“Told you to shuddup ’bout my mama,” Horn said.
Calhoun chucked a stick of wood, bounced it off the kid’s head. That broke the mood and everybody guffawed, and soon the company crawled into their blankets to catch some shuteye.
∇
Miller roused with an urge to piss. A moment later he lay frozen, listening to the faint and unearthly strains of music. Initially, he thought it the continuation of dream he’d had of sitting in the balcony of a fancy court while the queen in her dress and crown entertained a misshapen dwarf who wore a curious suit and a plumed hat, while in the background Ruark narrated in a thick accent, but no, this music was real enough, although it quavered at the very edge of perception. An orchestra of woodwinds and strings buoyed a choir singing in a foreign tongue. This choir’s harmony rose and fell with the swirls of wind, the creaking of the sea of branches in the dark above him. He couldn’t tell how far off the singers might be. Sound traveled strangely in the wild, was all the more tricky in the mountains.
“Ya hear that?” Calhoun said. Miller could barely make out the gleam of his eyes in the light of the coals. The young man’s whisper was harsh with fear. “The hell is that?”
“The wind, maybe,” Miller said after a few moments passed and the music faded and didn’t resume. The sky slowly lightened to pearl with tinges of red. He rose and ventured into the brush, did his business and wiped his hands with dead leaves and fir needles. Ruark was moving around by the time Miller returned. The old logger kindled the fire and put on coffee and biscuits. That drew the others, grumbling and muttering, from their bedrolls.
No one mentioned anything about voices or music, not even Calhoun, so Miller decided to keep his own counsel lest they think him addled. This was desolate country and uninhabited but for the occasional trapper. He’d heard the wind and nothing else. Soon, he pushed the mystery aside and turned his thoughts toward the day’s hunt.
Breakfast was perfunctory and passed without conversation. The party struck camp and headed northwest, gradually climbing deeper into the folds of Mystery Mountain. Sunlight reached fingers of gold through the canopy and cast a tiger stripe pattern over the shrubbery and giant ferns and the sweating boles of the trees. The pattern rippled as leaves rippled and shifted in a way that might hypnotize a man if he stared at it too hard. Miller blinked away the stupor and trudged along until they crested a bluff and found the wide, irregular bog Bane had spoken of the previous evening. The fellow had been correct—there was deer sign everywhere. The party fanned out in pairs and settled behind screens of brush to wait.
Miller dropped one as it entered the field at the edge of his weapon’s effective range, while Stevens, Bane, and Ruark each bagged one in the middle ground. Unfortunately, Horn’s lone shot merely injured his prey and it darted into the woods, forcing him, Ma, and Calhoun to pursue.
By noon three bucks were skinned and quartered. The men loaded the mules and strapped smaller cuts to their own packs and prepared to set off for Slango. Ma, Horn, and Calhoun remained in the forest pursuing the wounded buck.
“Damnation,” Bane said, shading his eyes against the sun. “We gonna be travelin’ in the dark as it is. Those green-hands dilly-dally much longer an’ it’s another biv-oo-ack tonight.”
“Hell with that. We don’t hoof it back by sundown McGrath will have our hides, sure as the Lord made little green apples.” Stevens unplugged the moonshine and had a swig. His face shone with sweat from the skinning and toting. “Here’s what I propose. Miller, you and Ruark take the mules and skedaddle back to Slango. Me and Bane will go round up our wayward friends and catch you two down the trail. Let’s get a move on, eh?”
Miller swatted at the clouds of swarming gnats and flies. A rifle boomed in the middle distance. Again after a long interval, and a third time. A universal signal of distress. That changed everything. Stevens, Bane, and Ruark frantically shucked the meat and hot-footed in the direction of the gunshots. Miller spent several minutes dumping the saddlebags from the mules and tethering them near a waterhole before setting after his comrades. He moved swiftly, bent over to follow their tracks and broken branches they’d left in their wake. He drew the Enfield from its scabbard and cradled the rifle to his breast.
Into the forest. And gods, the trees were larger than ever there along a shrouded ridge that dropped into a deep gulf of shadows and mist. He was channeled along a trail that proved increasingly treacherous. Water streamed from upslope, digging notches through moss and dirt into the underlying rock. In sections the dirt and vegetation were utterly stripped to exposed plates of slick stone, veined red with alkali and the bloody clay of the earth. The trees were so huge, their lattice of branches so tight, it became dim as a shuttered vault, and chilly enough to see faint vapors of one’s breath.
The game trail cut sharply into the hillside and eventually passed through a thick screen of saplings and devil’s club and leveled into a marshy clearing. A handful of boulders lay sunken into the moss and muck around the trunks of three squat cottonwood trees. Surprisingly enough, there were odds and ends of human habitation carelessly scattered—rusted stovetops and empty cans, rotted wooden barrels and planed timber, bits of old shattered glass and bent nails. Either the site of a ruined house, long swallowed by the earth, or a dumping ground. The rest of the men gathered at the rim of the hollow nearest a precipitous drop into the valley. Fast moving water rumbled from somewhere below.
Horn lay on his back, his boots propped on the body of the fallen buck. Ma and Calhoun were nowhere in evidence. Miller took it all in for a few moments. He finally shouldered his rifle and had a sip of water from his canteen. “He hurt?” He jerked his thumb at Horn. The boy’s coonskin cap had flown off and his long, gre
asy hair was a bird nest of leaves and twigs. A black and blue lump swelled above his eye.
“Nah, he ain’t hurt,” Stevens said. “Are ya, kid? He’s okay. Got the wind knocked outta him is all. Tripped over a damn root and busted his skull. He’ll be right as rain in a minute. Won’t ya, kid?”
Horn groaned and covered his eyes with his arm.
“He’s affrighted,” Bane said, and spat. The grizzled logger clutched his rifle in one hand and a tomahawk in the opposite. His knuckles were white. He kept moving his eyes.
“Afraid of what?” Miller said, surveying the area. He didn’t like the feel of the place, its dankness, the malformed cottonwoods, the garbage. He also disliked the fact Calhoun and Ma weren’t around.
Stevens and Bane glanced at each other and shrugged. Stevens squatted by Horn and patted his arm almost tenderly. “Wanna slug of this fine awerdenty, kid? Where’d those other boys get to, eh?” He helped Horn get seated upright, then held the jug for him while the kid had pull.
Ruark scowled and ambled to the drop and stared down into the valley. The water thumped and so did Miller’s heart. He tilted his head and stared through the opening above the clearing, regarded the brilliant blue-gold sky. Cloudless, immaculate. Already the sun was low against the peaks. Dark came early in the mountains. The sun seemed peculiar—it blurred and flames radiated from its core and its rim blackened like a coal.
Horn coughed and wiped his mouth on his wool sleeve. “Yeh, tripped an’ smacked muh noggin’. Weren’t no stob, though. No sir. They’s a snare yonder. Prolly more where that come from.” He pointed and Bane went and examined the spot.
Bane whistled and said, “He ain’t blowin’ smoke. Step light, boys. We ain’t alone.”
“Bushwhackers,” Ruark said, turning with predatory swiftness to regard his comrade.
“Ain’t no bushwhackers.” Stevens rose and swiped at the gathering flies with his hat. “We maybe got us a trapper tucked into that park down there. That’s what we got.”
“Shit.” Bane lifted a piece of thin rope, its long end snaking off through the underbrush. He coiled in the slack and gave it a yank. A bell clanged nearby and Bane threw the rope and jumped back as if scalded. “Shit!”
“Yeh, shit!” Ruark said and stepped away from the ridgeline. He had his Sharps in hand now.
Miller said, “Thad, where’s Cal and Ma?”
Horn still appeared confused from the blow to his head, but the grave faces of his companions sobered him a bit. “Din’t see on account I was woozy for a spell. Heard ’em jawin’ with somebody that come up on us. Cal said to hang on, they’d be right back.”
“You act a mite nervous. Something else happen?”
The boy hesitated. “Din’t much care for the sound of whoever they was that jawed with Cal an’ Ma. Not ’tall. Sounded right wicked.”
“The hell does that mean?” Stevens said.
Horn shrugged and pulled on his cap.
“Shitfire!” Bane said, and spat.
“How long ago?” Miller said. He thought of hiding in the trenches during the war, scanning the gloom for signs of the enemy creeping forward. He’d learned, as did most men of violence, to recognize the scent of imminent peril. At that moment the scent was very strong indeed.
“I reckon half an’ hour ago. I blacked out for a while. Them shots snapped me outta it.”
Before the boy had finished speaking, Bane and Ruark slipped away to the edge of the clearing, cutting for sign. Ruark whistled and everyone but Horn hustled over. Just beyond a deadfall he’d found a well-beaten footpath. Their missing comrades had passed this way, and so had at least two others. Bane swore and cut a plug of chaw and jammed it in his mouth. He swore again, and spat. The four held a brief discussion and decided there might be trouble ahead so caution was advised. Miller would help Horn back to camp while the rest went on to find Calhoun and Ma. Horn got to his feet and joined them, visibly shaking off his unsteadiness. “Like hell. Ma is my boy. I’m goin’.”
“Fine,” Stevens said. “Moses, you lead the way.” And the men proceeded along the path single file. The going was much easier than before as the path lay a few feet from the ridgeline and the hills, while steep, were much gentler than before.
Ten minutes later they came to a fork at the base of a dead red cedar. The bole of the cedar would’ve required four or five men to link hands to span its girth. It had sheared off at about the eighty foot mark. One fork of the trail continued along the ridge; the other descended into the valley, which was still mostly hidden by forest. Boot-prints went both directions, but Bane and Ruark were confident there friends had travelled in the valley. Bane sniffed the air, then gestured downward. “Wood smoke.”
“Sure enough,” Miller said just then winding the tang of smoke. They’d proceeded only a few paces when he happened to look back and stopped with a hiss of warning to his companions.
“What is it?” Stevens said.
“That tree,” Miller said, indicating a blaze mark on the downhill face of the big dead cedar—a stylized ring, broken on the sinister side. The symbol was roughly four feet across and gouged in a good three inches. Someone had daubed it in a thick reddish paint, now bled and mostly absorbed by the wood. It appeared petrified with age. Some inherent quality of the ring caused Miller’s flesh to crawl. The light seemed to dim, the forest to close in.
Nobody said anything. Stevens produced a small spy glass and swept the area. He muttered and tossed the glass to Bane. Bane looked around. He passed it to Ruark. Finally he swore and handed the glass back. Stevens in turn let Miller have a go. Stevens said, “I make out three more—there, there, and there.” He was correct. Miller spotted the other trees scattered along the hillside. Each was huge and dead, and each bore the weird glyph.
“I seen that mark afore,” Bane said in a reverential whisper.
“That book,” Miller said and Bane grunted. Miller asked for Stevens’ jug, hooked the handle with his pinky, mountain man fashion, and took a long, stout pull of the whiskey until black stars shot across his vision. Then he gasped for air and helped himself to another, healthier swig.
“Jaysus,” Stevens said when he finally retrieved his hooch. He shook the jug with a sad, amazed expression as if not quite comprehending how this could’ve happened to his stock.
“I don’t cotton to this ’tall,” Horn said. He rubbed the goose egg on his forehead. He was flour-pale.
“I’m with the pup,” Bane said. He spat. Ruark grunted agreement. He too spat a gob of Virginia Pride into the shrubbery.
Stevens crept up to the cedar and studied it intently, ran his fingers over the rough bark. He said, “Damn it all! Boys, lookee here.” As everyone clustered around he showed them how a great chunk of bark was separate from the tree. The slab of bark was as tall as three men, narrowing to a sharp peak. The outline, as of a door, was clear once they discerned it against the pattern. The bark door was hinged with sinew on one side.
“Whata ya reckon it is?” Horn said, backing away.
Watching Stevens trace the panel in search of a catch caused Miller’s anxiety to sharpen. The light was fading and far too early in the afternoon. The sun’s edge was being rapidly eaten by a black wave, creating a broken ring of fire and shadow. This phenomenon juxtaposed with the broken ring carved in the tree. Miller said, “Don’t boys! Just leave it!”
Stevens muttered his satisfaction at locating the catch. Bane and Stevens pulled the wooden panel three quarters of the way open and then stopped, bodies rigid as stone. From his vantage Miller couldn’t make out much of the hollow, gloomy interior, but the other two men stood with their necks craned and Bane moaned, low and aggrieved as a fellow who’d been stabbed in the gut. “Sweet Lord in heaven!” Stevens said.
Miller took several broad steps to join them at the portal. He gazed within and saw—
—Something squirmed and uncoiled, a darker piece of darkness, and resolved into—
—His vision clouded violently and he
staggered, was steadied by Ruark while Bane and Stevens sealed the panel, ramming it closed with their shoulders. They spun, faces white, wearing expressions of fear that were terrible to behold in men of such stern mettle.
“Good gawd, lookit the sky,” Horn said. The moon occulted the sun and the world became a shadowy realm where every surface glowed and bloomed with a queer bluish-white light. Every living thing in the forest held its breath.
“Jaysus Mother Mary!” Ruark said, breaking the spell. “Jaysus Mother Mary Christ Almighty!”
And the men scrambled, tripped and staggered, grasping at branches to keep their footing. The eclipse lasted four minutes at most. The group reached the bottom as the moon and the sun slid apart and the world brightened by degrees. The valley was narrow and ran crookedly north and south. There were falls to the north and a small, shallow river wound its way through sandbars and intermittent stands of cottonwood and fallen spars and uprooted trunks.
A rustic village lay one hundred seventy or so yards distant upon the opposite side of the valley behind a low palisade of vertical logs—a collection of antique cottages and bungalows that extended as far as the middle heights of the terraced hillside. Several figures moved among the buildings, tending to chickens, hanging clothes. Stevens passed the scope around and it was confirmed that a handful of women were the only visible inhabitants.
Miller had marched similar villages in the European countryside where the foundations might be centuries old, perhaps dated from Medieval times. To encounter such a place here in the wilds of North America was incomprehensible. This town was wrong, utterly wrong, and the valley one of the hidden places of the world. He’d never heard a whisper of the community and only God knew why people would dwell in secret. Perhaps they belonged to a religious sect that had fled persecution and wished to follow their faith in peace. He thought of the dreadful music from the previous night, the ominous drums, the blackening sun, and was not reassured.