by K. T. Tomb
“Naomi?”
“Yes,” she said, turning her face toward him.
He studied her face, hoping to keep it locked within his memory forever. The high, sculpted cheekbones, the noble nose and chin, the full lips that invited a kiss and the haunting dark eyes that penetrated to his soul. He could not hold himself back. He pressed his lips onto hers and felt their softness. His eager mouth wanted more and more as he felt the heat of passion rising up inside of him. She responded to his kiss and turned so that she could press her body into his. His heart thundered in his chest as he let go of a driving urge that had been absent from him for years. Suddenly, she pulled her lips away from his.
“You have the dagger then?” she asked.
Her eyes searched his.
“How did you know?”
“I sent it to you.”
Instantly, everything changed and he was back behind the wheel of the car outside of Santa Fe. Startled by the sudden transition, he jerked the wheel and then fought to keep control of the car, barely missing a date with disaster and a fast moving 18-wheeler as he pulled the car back into his own lane, blaring horn penetrating his foggy brain with a solid dose of reality.
“Damn it Parke, put that fucking thing away before you kill us. Jesus, I swear!”
He stared at her for a moment. Was she real or was the painted horse, Naomi and the kiss real?
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Lucky for him, Melissa’s harsh voice was a great deal like a hard slap in the face and he was able to recover his wits. He was in the right lane of northbound Interstate 25 watching a semi overtake him on the left with its wheels humming loudly from the high rate of speed.
He slipped the dagger back into the scabbard and laid it on the console between the two seats. His mind was dashing in several different directions in search of an explanation. He had been gone for what seemed like fifteen or twenty minutes, yet no time had passed. He hadn’t fallen asleep. He knew that because he hadn’t been sleepy. It had started with a gust of wind and the face screaming at him. Had Melissa felt the wind and seen the face?
“Some gust of wind, huh?” he ventured, hoping that she could help him make sense of things.
The look that she gave him didn’t need words attached to it. There had been no gust of wind and she was certain that he had lost it. She started to speak, but cut it off, wrinkled her nose as if there was some sudden foul odor and then turned her head away.
Parke was perfectly content to allow the silence to continue. There was plenty of noise going on inside of his own head as he tried to hammer out some sort of meaning from the events that had taken place only moments before.
Only one answer had gained any credibility in his mind by the time he turned the car to the right-hand fork of the “Y” that sent them from Interstate 25 onto Interstate 70 in Denver; he had indeed lost his mind.
Chapter Four
Back in their home in St. Louis, life became routine again. Melissa continued to criticize everything that he did and he bore it all in silence until she would leave to go to work and he could finally find some peace from her.
Each day when he sat down to paint, he would take the dagger out of the drawer, slide it out of the scabbard, allow its warmth to burn in his hand until it grew cold again. He would slide it back into the scabbard and back into the drawer and then begin to form the image from his mind in exquisite detail.
The sculpted lines of her face, the smoothness of her caramel colored skin, the softness of her lips and the penetrating mystery of her eyes took shape and life daily as he remembered the moment that they had shared. After touching the dagger, the image was fresh and a certain detail would suddenly be brought to his attention, but it would soon fade and he would move on to other work. Initially, he had tried to continue to draw inspiration from the dagger a second time, but he soon came to realize that it was only meant to happen for a single moment each day. The dagger would heat up in his hand each time he picked up, but it did not always yield the vision.
He remembered the words that she had spoken to him. She had sent the dagger to him. Why had she sent it to him? At first, he believed that it was a means of returning to her, but after several weeks passed in her absence, he began to see that her words were even more of a mystery. Some crazy thoughts entered his mind about the purpose behind the dagger. Perhaps it was a type of muse or that he had simply wanted to believe in some sort of mystical power in it and that none of the things that had been associated with it were actually true. He finally convinced himself that the trapped spirit of Naomi was lost within the magic of the dagger somehow and that by painting her image, he brought her back to life.
Artists typically have some rather odd ideas where inspiration is concerned and Parke Higgins was no different in that respect; however, there was a nagging feeling that simply would not let him go. Even when he tried to deny it, something continued to tell him that it had been real. His heart yearned for her and he longed for the dream to return. He would hold the dagger, close his eyes and try to force himself into the vision, onto the other side or into the other world, but it was all to no avail.
Melissa became more and more critical of his work, especially his painting of Naomi, which, much to his delight, had struck a chord of jealousy in her. He knew that her jealousy was an indication that he was truly capturing the essence of the woman with the strokes of his brush and he was very pleased with what had taken shape. As the painting had reached a point of perfection, his visions of Naomi stopped. In fact, there were no longer any visions whenever he held the dagger in his hands. Perhaps it had lost its power. After a time, he no longer pulled the dagger from the drawer whenever he sat down to paint.
When he took Naomi’s finished image from the easel and hung it with his countless other forgotten paintings, he felt as though he was betraying her in some small way and therefore, rather than place it to the side, he put it in a more conspicuous location where he hoped that she would not be forgotten.
Without the dagger’s inspiration, he began to return to other methods, proven methods which had helped him to produce numerous dramatic pieces in the past. He shuffled through the hundreds of photos from their vacation at the Grand Canyon. There were numerous brilliant shots of the wonder, but he continued thumbing through them until his eyes came to rest on one that was certainly less dramatic than any from the Canyon. He had snapped the photo as they were traveling up US Highway 491. It was a very simple cluster of hogans with goats and horses grazing nearby; what captured his eye, however, was the way in which the Chuska Mountains beyond the small cluster seemed to bear down upon the pastoral scene and overshadow it. The photo was sinister and idyllic at the same time.
He recalled the happy spirit of the man in the trading post and drew a parallel in his mind between “the man with the happy spirit” and the cluster of hogans. He was ready to set up his next piece.
“Are you starting one tonight?” Melissa accused. “Do you know how late it is?”
“I’m just setting it up. Yes, I know how late it is.”
There was no point getting into anything with her.
“We have to be leaving here by 6:00 a.m., you remember.”
“Yes, I remember. I’ll be along in a minute.”
“You better. I don’t want to have to fight with you to get you moving in the morning and then be late to boot.”
“I understand.”
In spite of his best intentions, one thing led to another and it was 1:00 a.m. before he finally dragged himself away from “setting up” his canvas and slipped beneath the covers. Looking at the clock beside the bed, he was already dreading the 5:00 a.m. alarm that would come much too quickly. He was completely spent and therefore drifted to sleep easily.
“A dagger made completely of jade?” the old man asked. He was a thousand years old if he was a hundred. The lines of his face were deeply carved into his face. His white hair was as brilliant as sunshine on snow. The chiseled featur
es of the Navajo in the trading post and those of Naomi were shared by him, but in an ancient, eternal way. Though everything about him spoke of the withering away of winter, his black eyes were brilliant and alive. There was laughter in them.
“Yes, Hosteen John,” Parke replied. “The blade, hilt and handle were all formed from the same stone.”
“I must see this dagger.”
Parke produced the dagger and placed it into the wrinkled hands of the old man.
“Ummm,” Hosteen John groaned as he turned the dagger over in his hands. “It is becoming very hot.”
He did not seem to register any discomfort from the heat of the dagger and continued looking at it.
“Is it magic?” Parke asked.
“Anything is magic in the hands of someone who believes.”
Parke wondered if he simply hadn’t believed enough.
“It is indeed formed from one stone. This is a stone that is not present in Dinetah.”
“It must have come from the orient,” Parke replied. “Perhaps it was carried over the Bering Strait from the orient and that was how the Navajo who sold it came upon it.”
“Why would it have come to him in that way?”
The wrinkles on the old man’s brow wrinkled further.
“Because Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait Land Bridge to come here.”
“Perhaps some did,” the old man admitted. “But the Diné entered this world from the first world. When it became too corrupt, first man and first woman came from the womb of mother earth into Dinetah.”
Parke knew the significance of the kivas which were found in the ruined lodges of Mesa Verde, but he had no idea that the Navajo had the same view of how they came about. His thoughts were interrupted.
“Do you think it is magic?” Hosteen John asked him.
“I don’t know. One time, I think I saw a vision when I was holding it. Other times, it helped me recall portions of a vision for my painting.”
The old man continued studying the dagger without speaking. It began to glow in his hands and Parke watched with eager anticipation the drama that was unfolding in front of him.
The shrill, steady beeping of the alarm clock snatched away the dream and he found himself in the early morning darkness of his own bed. Melissa slipped out of bed and shuffled toward the bathroom while he tried to reconnect himself with reality.
The dream had been incredibly real, just like those before. He slipped out of bed and dragged his feet on the carpet until he reached the door of his studio. The tile floor of his studio was a brisk wakeup and he immediately wished he had thought to put on his slippers. He went directly to the drawer where he had placed the forgotten dagger, took it out and then removed it from the scabbard. It did not heat up in his hands as it always had before. He recalled his conversation with “the man with the happy spirit.”
Have I, too, lost my way? The thought saddened him, but he quickly gathered his wits about him and slipped the dagger back into the scabbard. As he started to return it to the drawer, he caught a glimpse of the painting that he had been setting up the night before. Something was different.
As he examined the barely started painting, he noticed that one of the hogans was already completed in exquisite detail.
“That’s impossible,” he whispered. “I didn’t do that.”
He looked back at the dagger and removed it from the scabbard once more. As his eyes moved back and forth between the hogan and the dagger, it began to vibrate and become hot in his hand.
“Seriously?” Melissa’s voice called out from behind him. “You’re going to come in here and fuck around with a painting when we need to be leaving in 45 minutes?”
He turned toward her with the dagger in his hand opening his mouth to reply and then he was suddenly plunged into a deep darkness.
Chapter Five
With darkness all around him, he remained motionless.
Where was he? Had he suddenly gone blind? Was he dead? Straining his senses, he reached out into the darkness around him. There was a sound. Was it a footstep? He was certain that anything he could not see could not see him either. He held his breath and tried to control the drumming in his chest. He heard the sound again. It was above him. Was he in a basement?
The small amount of experience that he had with the dagger did little when it came to helping him understand where he was and what was taking place. The silence surrounding him only served to make the scrambling of his thoughts seem like a cacophony of noises that would certainly betray his presence. Why was he worried about where he was? Why had he assumed that because he was in darkness, the sound, any person or creature around him would harm him?
Maybe, if he was able to find a doorway or something, he would have a little better idea of where he was and how to find some sort of light. Anything would be better than the maddening darkness. He heard the footsteps again. They were very faint, but seemed to be above him and to his left. His eyes followed the sound, though they could see nothing. There were more footsteps and then faint voices. He strained to hear what was being said, but he could make out nothing.
He needed to touch something, anything. The void was simply too much for his psyche to handle. He raised his hands straight in front of him and shuffled forward slowly reaching up and down as he went. The sudden shock of his forehead hitting something solid nearly made him cry out. He brought his hands back toward himself and felt what after some examination must be a wooden column. He was in a room then. It had to be a basement.
The voices and footsteps above him seemed to increase in number. Were they friend or foe? His dreams and visions whenever handling the dagger in the past had begun with the running and then flying horse originally and then later they had simply become a means of helping him to fully recall the features of Naomi. This sort of darkness had never been a part of it. The moment that he thought of her, he could see the image of her face in his mind. He would have much preferred going straight into her arms and her kisses rather than into the darkness. The thought of her calmed him somehow and he lingered in the memory of their moment together.
His reverie was interrupted by the sound of scraping above him and then a single beam of light that grew in front of him, revealing a ladder in the middle of the round stone room; a ring of eight columns supported the floor above in the center and the outer walls were of stone, just like he remembered from the kivas when he and Melissa toured Mesa Verde. There was a single doorway off to one side of the stone room. As soon as he saw the first foot placed on the top rung of the ladder, he hurried toward the doorway.
It was pitch black outside the doorway, except for the tiny, dim stream of light that became brighter as whoever held the light came further down the ladder and into the room. The beam revealed a trail and brush on either side. He hurried as quietly as he could into the brush not far from the doorway and flattened himself into the dry soil and watched as six men, the first and last carrying torches, exited the round room.
The men, who were extremely tall and slender, seemed more like skeletons than they did men. Their eyes were larger than normal human eyes and their fingers seemed to have claws on the ends rather than normal human fingernails. His first thought was that they were aliens, though other than the differences already mentioned they were very much human.
He could not understand their speech as they filed past him, watching them and listening until the last sound and the light from the final torch faded away as they disappeared beyond a bend in the trail. Again, the entire absence of light overtook him. Where was the moon? Where were the stars? He didn’t expect street lamps out in the middle of nowhere, but the complete absence of any form of light simply baffled him.
From memory, he crawled from his hiding place and along the ground in the direction of the stone structure. The distance seemed to be greater than he imagined and he wondered if he had somehow gotten turned around. He began to panic. If he had crawled in the wrong direction, he might continue searching fore
ver, or at least until he died of thirst or starvation.
“Maybe I should stop and think for a moment,” he muttered to himself.
He sat back, careful not to turn, just in case he was actually facing in the right direction. He was certain that he had recalled the proper direction, but just the same, it was better to think before he was eternally lost.
“A flashlight would be handy right now or a cell phone,” he whispered.
Even a match would be enough. He patted his pockets even though he knew he did not carry any matches or a lighter. He had to do something. He had to trust his instincts. He had been facing the structure when he was hiding; he had merely turned his head to watch the men pass by. The structure had to be in front of him. How could he have missed it? He decided to reach out one more time and stretched as far as he could. His hand touched the stone wall.
Elated with the fact that he had found his way back, he stood, pressing his back against the wall and sliding around it in the direction that the door ought to be. The thought occurred to him that he could essentially circumnavigate the entire structure before reaching the door, but it was certainly safer to stay in contact with the structure, even if he had to go all the way around it. There was no need to travel far, the opening appeared not long after he started around the wall; in fact, it was very near where he placed it in his memory.
Once inside the doorway, he pressed himself against the inner wall.
“Alright, Parke, how do you find the center?”
He pictured the room in his memory. It had only been a brief view that he’d gotten, but it was a simple, empty room with columns and a ladder in the center. He moved forward slowly swinging his arms back and forth as he searched for one of the columns. After what seemed like a very long time, one of his hands brushed a column and he moved in closer to it, leaning against it to think. Now he had to find the ladder and a way out of wherever he was. It was in the center of the ring of columns. Theoretically, he could walk a circle all of the way around it and never find it. He needed another reference point. If he could find another column, he could walk straight forward and into the ladder.