Still Life with Crows

by Preston; Child

  There was a flash of something at the periphery of his vision and he stopped and spun around. “Hey!”

  He got just the briefest look before it darted away into the blackness. Brief as the glance was, it was enough to leave no doubt at all that it wasn’t one of his team.

  And it sure as hell wasn’t McFelty.

  Sixty-Four

  Chester Raskovich turned a corner and stopped, the grotesque sight before him arresting his headlong flight. He stared, his mind reeling. Crouching in front of him, blocking his path, was a ragged, wispy-haired figure, staring up at him with hollow eyes, mouth yawning open as if to bite, teeth drawn back.

  Raskovich leaned back with a neigh of terror, wanting to run and yet unable to do so, waiting for the thing to leap up and pounce on him. It was like a nightmare: his feet frozen to the ground, paralyzed, unable to flee.

  He gulped in air—again, and then again—and, gradually, paralysis and fright ebbed and reason began to return. He leaned closer. It was nothing more than the mummified body of an Indian, sitting on the floor, bony knees drawn up, mouth open, shriveled lips drawn back from an enormous row of brown teeth. Placed around him was a semicircle of pots, each with a stone arrowhead in it. The mummy was wrapped in stringy rags that at one time might have been buckskin.

  He looked away, swallowed, looked back again, and let his breathing slow to a semblance of normality. What he was looking at was a prehistoric Indian burial. He could see the remains of beaded moccasins on the twisted feet, next to a painted parfleche and some tattered feathers.

  “Fuck,” said Raskovich out loud, ashamed at his panic, just now realizing what he’d done. He’d blown it. His first job as a real cop and he’d lost it completely, right in front of Sheriff Hazen. Running like a rabbit. And now here he was, lost in a cave, with a killer on the loose, and no idea which way to go. He felt a wave of shame and despair: he should’ve stayed at KSU, keeping kids off the water tower and giving out parking tickets.

  Suddenly, he lashed out in rage and frustration, aiming a savage kick at the mummy. His foot connected with a hollowthock and the top of the head exploded in a ball of brown dust. A boiling stream of white insects came skittering out—they looked like albino roaches—and the mummy toppled sideways, the jaw coming loose and rolling a few turns across the ground before coming to a halt among broken pieces of skull. An ivory snake, hidden beneath the rags, uncoiled with a flash and shot off into the darkness like a thin ghost.

  “Oh,shit! ” Raskovich shouted, skipping back. “Goddamn it!”

  He stood there, breathing hard, hearing the sound of air rattling in his throat. He had no idea where he was, how far he had run, where he should go.

  Think.

  He looked around, shining his infrared lamp around the damp surfaces of rock. He had been running through a narrow, tall crack with a sandy floor. The crack was so high he could not even make out the top. He could see his own footprints in the sand. He listened: no sound, not even water.

  Retrace your steps.

  Giving one last glance at the now-desecrated burial, Raskovich turned and walked back along the crack, keeping his eyes on the ground. Now he noticed what had been ignored in his headlong flight: almost every niche and shelf on both sides of the crack was piled with bones and other objects: painted pots, quivers full of arrows, hollow skulls rustling with cave life. It was a mausoleum, an Indian catacomb.

  He shivered.

  To his relief, he soon left the burials behind. The crack widened and the ceiling came down, and he could make out cruel-looking stalactites overhead. The sandy bottom gave way to shallow terraces of water, layered in strange accretions like rice paddies. As the sand fell behind, so did the trace of his footsteps.

  Ahead were two openings, one tall and partly blocked with fallen limestone blocks, the other open. Which way now?

  Think, asshole. Remember.

  But for the life of him Raskovich could not remember which way he had come.

  He thought of shouting, then decided against it. Why attract attention? The thing the dogs had found might still be around somewhere, looking for him. The cave was far bigger than it was supposed to be, but he could still find his way out if he took his time and didn’t panic again. They would be looking for him, too. He had to remember that.

  He chose the larger opening and felt reassured by the long tunnel ahead of him. It looked familiar somehow. And now he could see something else, an indistinct reddish blur in the goggles, up on a shelf of rock beside a dark hole. An arrangement of objects. Another burial?

  He approached. There was another Indian skull, some feathers and arrowheads and bones. But these were arranged in a very unusual pattern on the shelf of rock. It was disquieting, somehow, like nothing he’d seen in books or museum displays. There were non-Indian objects, too: strange little figures made of string and twine; a broken pencil; a rotting wooden alphabet block; the fragmented head of a porcelain doll.

  Jesus Christ, the little arrangement gave him the creeps. He backed away.This wasn’t old. Somebody had taken the old bones and rearranged them with these other things. Raskovich felt a shiver convulse his back.

  There was a grunt from the darkness over his shoulder.

  Raskovich did not move. There were no more sounds: the silence that descended again was complete. A minute went by, then two, while Raskovich remained frozen, as the uncertainty and terror continued to mount within him.

  And then the moment came when he was unable to stop himself from turning. Slowly—very slowly—he twisted around until he saw what had made the noise.

  Raskovich fell still, paralyzed once again, not even a whisper of breath escaping his lips.It stood there, grotesque, misshapen, hideous. The sight was so terrible that every detail etched itself into his brain. Was that really a pair of handmade shorts and suspenders on those giant, twisted legs: suspenders decorated with rocking horses? Was that shirt, hanging in tatters from the roped and matted chest, really patterned with comets and rocket ships? And, above them, was that face really,really, so very . . .

  The horrible figure took a step forward. Raskovich stared, unable to move. A meaty arm lashed out and swatted him. He fell to the cave floor, the night-vision goggles flying.

  The blow broke the spell of terror, and now, finally, he was able to move his limbs. He scrambled backward, blind, a loud keening sound issuing from his throat. He could hear the monster shuffling toward him, making sucking noises with his mouth. He managed to get to his feet and retreated a few steps, the final step dropping into nothingness. He lost his balance and toppled backward, tensing, expecting to land heavily against the hard stone floor of the cave, but there was nothing, nothing at all, just a great rush of wind as he hurtled into a dark void, endlessly down, down—

  Sixty-Five

  Hank Larssen turned to face Cole and Brast. The troopers looked like goggle-eyed monsters in the reddish light.

  “I really don’t think this is the way they went,” Larssen said.

  The sentence fell away into silence.

  “Well?” Larssen looked from Cole to Brast. The two state troopers almost looked like twins: fit, wiry, crew-cut, taut jawlines, steely eyes. Or rather, once-steely eyes. Now, even in the pale wash of the night-vision goggles they looked confused and uncertain. It had been a mistake, he realized, to leave the huge cavern of limestone pillars looking for Hazen. The barking of the dogs had gone suddenly silent, and they’d taken off down one of the countless side passages in what seemed like the direction of retreating footsteps. But the passage had divided, once, then twice, before turning into a confusing welter of crisscrossing tunnels. Once he thought he’d heard Hazen calling out his name. But there had been no more sounds for the last ten minutes, at least. It was going to be a real chore just to find their way back out.

  He wondered how he’d become the de facto leader of this happy little picnic. Cole and Brast were both part of the much-vaunted “high-risk entry team” and had trained for special situations
like this. At the state police HQ they had a gym, workout facilities, a pool, shooting range, special training seminars, and weekend retreats. Larssen sure hoped he wasn’t going to have to hand-hold these guys.

  “Wake up, you two. Did you hear me? I said, I don’t think this is the way they went.”

  “I don’t know,” said Brast. “It seems right to me.”

  “It seems right to you,” Larssen repeated sarcastically. “And you, Cole?”

  Cole just shook his head.

  “All right, that settles it. We turn around and get out of here.”

  “What about Hazen?” Cole said. “Weeks?”

  “Sheriff Hazen and Officer Weeks are trained law enforcement personnel who can take care of themselves.”

  The two troopers just looked at him.

  “Are we all in agreement on this?” Larssen asked, raising his voice. Damned idiots.

  “I’m with you,” Brast said with evident relief.

  “Cole?”

  “I don’t like leaving people down here,” said Cole.

  A real hero,thought Larssen. “Sergeant Cole, it’s pointless to wander around down here any longer. We can go for backup. They could be anywhere in this maze. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were already on their way out.”

  Cole licked his lips. “All right,” he said.

  “Then let’s go.”

  They had been circling their way back toward the limestone forest for five minutes and had reached an unfamiliar-looking crossroads when Larssen first heard the sound. The others must have heard it, too, because they spun around with him. It was faint, but unmistakable: the sound of running footsteps, approaching at high speed. But not human, no: the tattoo of heavy footfalls was too rapid for that.

  It was something big.

  “Weapons!” shouted Larssen, dropping to one knee and raising the riot gun to his shoulder. He took aim down the intersecting tunnel.

  The running came closer, accompanied by a metallic clanking. And now a big reddish form materialized out of the darkness. Whatever it was, it was huge.

  “Ready!”

  The thing bore down on them with terrible speed. It tore through a shallow puddle, raising a curtain of droplets in its wake.

  “Wait!” Larssen said abruptly. “Hold your fire!”

  It was one of the dogs.

  The animal hurtled toward them, utterly heedless of their presence, the wide wild eyes staring fixedly ahead. The only sound it made was the drumming of its huge paws against the stone. As it flashed past, Larssen saw that the animal was covered with blood, and that one of the ears was torn away, as well as part of the lower jaw. Big black lips and tongue flapped loosely, dripping foam and blood.

  In another second it was gone, the sound of its flight fading away. Then silence returned. It had all happened so quickly that Larssen almost wondered if he’d imagined it. “What thefuck? ” Brast whispered. “Did you see—?”

  Larssen swallowed, but no moisture came. His mouth felt dry as sawdust. “He must’ve slipped, fallen.”

  “Bullshit,” said Cole, his voice unnaturally loud in the confined space. “You don’t lose half your jaw in a fall. Someone attacked that dog.”

  “Or something, ” Brast muttered.

  “For chrissakes, Brast,” said Larssen, “show some backbone.”

  “Why was he running like that? That dog was scared shitless.”

  Larssen said, “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “No argument there.”

  They turned back, Larssen keeping his eyes on the damp tracks of the dog. They could probably follow those with confidence; that would make things a whole lot easier.

  Brast spoke into the silence. “I heard something.”

  They paused once again.

  “Something splashing through that puddle back there.”

  “Don’t start again, Brast.”

  Then Larssen heard it, too: the faint splash of a footfall in water, followed by another. He stared down the dark tunnel behind them, the cavern walls a red wash in his goggles. He could make out nothing.

  “Just dripping water, probably.” He shrugged, turned back to follow the dog tracks.

  Muh!

  Brast gave a yell, and at the same time Larssen felt a sudden brutal shove from behind that sent him sprawling to the ground, his night-vision goggles flying. Brast was still yelling, and Cole gave a sudden, sharp scream.

  Larssen was blind. In desperation he crawled around on his hands and knees, feeling the ground, and then with enormous relief felt his hands close on the goggles. He slipped them back onto his head with thick stupid fingers and looked around.

  Cole was on the ground, yelling and clutching his arm. Brast was on his hands and knees against the cavern wall, scrabbling around for his goggles just like Larssen had been a second before, cursing and gasping.

  “My arm!” Cole screamed. A spear of bone protruded from his arm at a strange angle and hot blood poured from the wound, almost white in the sheen of the goggles.

  Larssen tore his eyes from the sight and looked around wildly for whatever had attacked them, shotgun at the ready, but there was nothing—nothing but the grim artificial glow of the cavern walls.

  A single sound, like a hoot of laughter or perhaps triumph, came from the darkness somewhere. Larssen tightened his grip on the shotgun. Exactly where it had come from was impossible to tell.

  He was sure of only one thing: it was close.

  Sixty-Six

  Corporal Shurte of the Kansas Highway Patrol fingered his shotgun and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. He checked his watch: eleven-thirty. Hazen and the rest had been gone for over an hour. How long did it take to corner McFelty, cuff him, and drag his ass out? It was unnerving, standing out here without any contact. Part of it, of course, was the weather. He’d lived in this part of Kansas all his life but he couldn’t remember ever seeing a storm like this one. Usually, the really ugly weather came and went pretty quick. But this had been going on for hours, it seemed, and it was only getting worse. Unbelievable wind, pelting rain, lightning like to split the sky. Before radio communications had finally gone down there’d been early reports of an F-3 tornado chewing toward Deeper, all hell breaking lose, FEMA trying to get in, the highways blocked.

  And the power: usually you’d get one grid segment, maybe two, down at a time. But tonight it had been like a giant hand pulling the plug on one tiny town after the next. After Medicine Creek it had been Hickok, DePew, Ulysses, Johnson City, Lakin, and finally Deeper, before his radio had stopped working altogether from the loss of repeater stations. Shurte was from Garden City and he was glad the other side of the county seemed to be taking the worst of it. Still, he worried about his wife and kids. It was a hell of a night to be away from home.

  The hooded propane lamp they’d set up cast a faint glow around the mouth of the cave. Williams, standing on the far side of the cut, looked like a zombie, hunched against the rain, big dark hollows where his eyes should be. The only thing that made him look remotely human was the glowing cigarette that dangled from his lower lip.

  Another bolt of lightning cracked the sky, tearing almost from horizon to horizon. Beyond the cave, it flashed a brief image of the big old Kraus mansion, all alone and dilapidated, darkened by the rain.

  He glanced over at Williams. “So how long are we going to stake out the entrance? I mean, I’m getting soaked.”

  Williams dropped his cigarette, ground it under his boot, shrugged.

  There was another flash. Shurte glanced at the dark slot that led down into the cave. Maybe they had the perp holed up and were trying to persuade him to come out . . .

  And then from the mouth of the cave, over the sound of the wind, he heard the heavy galloping of feet.

  He took a step forward, raising his shotgun. “You hear that?” he began sharply.

  A dark form suddenly came hurtling up the passage toward them: a huge dog, running like mad, chain twitching and lashing behind like
a whip, feet drumming.

  “Williams!” Shurte shouted.

  The animal blew out of the cave mouth and into the open. Just then there was another terrific rip of lightning, followed instantaneously by an earth-shaking crash. The dog hesitated, confused, turning around and around, snapping at the air, eyes rolling and wild. In the livid lightning Shurte saw that it was bright red, wet and glistening.

  “Holy shit,” he breathed.

  The dog crouched toward the light of the lantern, still trembling violently—all without making a sound.

  “Son of abitch, ” said Williams. “You see his mouth? Looks like he caught a load of buckshot.”

  The dog staggered, the blood pooling underneath him, and then righted himself, massive limbs shaking uncontrollably.

  “Catch him,” said Shurte. “Grab his chain.”

  Williams crouched and slowly picked up the end of the chain. The dog just stood there, still now, trembling with pain and terror.

  “Easy, boy. Easy. Good dog.”

  Williams slowly lifted the end of the leash toward the only suitable tie spot: a protruding pin on the door hinge of the cave. Suddenly the dog, feeling the gentle tug on his neck, whirled with a screech of fury and slashed out at Williams. The man went down with a howl, dropping the leash, and in a second the dog was gone, a black shape hurtling away into the cornfields.

  “Son of a bitch bit me!” Williams cried, holding his leg.

  Shurte rushed over and directed his flashlight at the fallen trooper. The pants were torn and blood welled from a gash in his thigh.

  “Jesus, Williams,” Shurte said, shaking his head. “And to think he did that with only half a jaw.”

  Sixty-Seven

  Larssen bent over Cole, who was sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth and whimpering to himself. It was an ugly compound fracture, the jagged end of bone sticking out just above the elbow.