The Hunter in the Shadows

by Joab Stieglitz

  “Only my pride,” he said with a wry smile. “Von Juntz here seems to have broken my fall!”

  “He was shot,” Anna said, “and the shooter must still be here somewhere.” Lyton glanced around the chamber.

  “Where?” the Englishman said with skepticism. “There are no other chambers here, and the only way out is…” He glanced up at the rope. “Oh, dear.”

  “There is also that opening in the floor,” Anna said, directing his gaze to it. “Perhaps there is an exit below.”

  Satisfied, Lyton started searching von Juntz’s pockets. When he removed a small notebook from a shirt pocket, he quickly flipped through the pages, on which Anna could see handwritten notes scribbled in German. As he flipped through the pages, one fell out. Anna quickly stooped over and picked it up, but Lyton was too focused on the notebook and had not noticed. Glancing at the paper, she saw a carefully drawn depiction of the design in the plaza — the same design that was on Sobak’s clothing. She folded the page and put it in her own pocket.

  Still wary of potential attackers, Anna glanced around the room as she crawled to the lip of the hole. She peered down as Lyton appeared at her side, and noted what looked like a ladder set into one side with unusual characters carved into the wall between the rungs.

  “Those glyphs are common througohut the complex,” Lyton said, “but I hadn’t begun translating them yet.” Anna recognized the writing. It was similar to that which Brian Teplow had translated while under hypnosis. “Von Juntz has noted various glyphs in his notebook, but had only translated a handful of characters.” He flipped through the book, looking for the glyphs in view. “It seems as if the language is ideographic. Von Juntz has noted several possible meanings next to several of them.” He continued flipping. “But none of these have been translated.”

  “It seems to continue down the ladder,” Anna noted. “Perhaps it is meant to be said while descending.”

  “Some kind of prayer or incantation, you think?” Lyton asked. Anna nodded.

  “But we do not know how to read or pronounce them,” she said evenly. “We must proceed anyway.” Anna looked down into the opening and tried to make out what was below, but the abyss seemed bottomless. The rotting smell was replaced by a gust of comparatively fresh, warm humidity.

  “Maybe there are side passages from this shaft that we just can’t see from here,” Lyton suggested with a hopeful expression.

  “Perhaps,” Anna said, then climbed feet first down the ladder cut into the wall. As soon as her hands took hold of the rungs, she realized how sweaty she was. Her fingers barely gripped the smooth stone which was worn in the center. She quickly found some remaining texture along the sides of the rungs. “Keep your feet in the center of the steps and grab toward the sides of the rungs with your hands.”

  Slowly and carefully, Anna descended. Her feet slipped on almost every step, but she gradually climbed down the rungs. Anna could hear Lyton muttering obscenities, and dirt and debris rained on her from his misplaced steps. She climbed much faster than he did, even at a careful pace, so the Englishman was barely visible in the darkness, perhaps twenty feet above her.

  They climbed for an unknown length of time. With all of Lyton’s complaining, it seemed like an eternity to Anna, but was probably only a few minutes.

  Each step was becoming more difficult. The muscles in Anna’s arms and legs were aching, but there was no indication of a bottom or even a landing below her. The debris that passed by Anna fell without ever striking anything below. Perhaps the shaft was bottomless. Yet the sides had clearly been engineered. Aside from the ladder and the glyphs between the rungs, the walls were made of smooth stone fit so tightly together that the seams were barely visible.

  Then it dawned on Anna that the exits were probably concealed in the stonework. She stopped her descent and looked closely at the walls surrounding her. Her eyes had adjusted to the near-total darkness, and she could make out the lines of the seams. All she had to do was find evidence of and air passage. It was a long shot. The chambers beyond may not open up to the surface, or not anymore. The secret doors had probably not been opened in centuries, so the gaps could possibly be packed with ancient sediment. But she had to try.

  Anna held tightly onto the stones and blew into the visible seams. As expected, dust cleared from the spaces, but unexpectedly swirled around her, getting into her eyes, mouth, and nose. Uncontrollably, Anna sneezed, the lurch of it carrying her away from the wall. Her hands lost their grip, and she tumbled, falling face first.

  Anna was frozen in terror. She seemed to fall for an eternity. Absolute blackness stretched all around. She was moving too fast for her eyes to focus on anything. A whooshing sound flooded her ears, but that faint, gibbering sound persisted, and was still audible above it all. Then, there was nothing.

  Chapter 3

  March 9, 1930

  Anna awakened with a start. She was in darkness, surrounded by warm, soft, furry wrappings. There was light interspersed among the coverings, and at her movement, a thumping motion shook the area. She kicked with her arms and legs, the warm fur leapt away, and sunlight flooded the chamber.

  Cletus, the large, black, barrel-chested mutt with a white stripe down his eyes and around his muzzle, wagged his tail, which thumped loudly against the floor, his tongue lolling in a doggy grin. Anna had adopted the dog when the Junazhi, inter-dimensional insectoid aliens, had failed to reassemble his owner’s frozen and shattered body.

  Anna was in her bed. With the blankets and Cletus now on the floor, she was overcome by the chill. Bright sunlight shone through the window, reflected off the snow-covered landscape outside. It was cold for March in Wellersburg, and the late snowfall had left a foot of accumulation on the ground, accompanied by a blustery, chilling wind. She shuddered involuntarily as a gust rattled the panes of her bedroom window.

  Anna glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand. She had not bothered to set the alarm. She had nowhere to go.

  While the small university town and surrounding farms had been largely spared from the aftermath of the stock market crash and the drought that had struck the Midwest, the town had been flooded with people from the city looking for work. As a result, indigent care had become a priority of Reister University. Her one colleague, Dr. Harold Lamb, was spending long hours at the hospital tending to the less fortunate, while Father Sean O’Malley was busy ministering to the downtrodden at Saint Michael’s Church.

  Anna had not been so overcome by events. Attendance at the university had dropped, and the need for adjunct professors along with it. Since Fyodor Rykov, Anna’s late husband, had been paranoid enough to commit his fortune to precious metals and stones, Anna’s own finances had actually increased in value with the decline in paper investments. Insulated from the harsh realities around her, and without any pressing responsibilities, Anna had fallen into a torpor.

  The potential of the Longborough Foundation for Ethnographic Research had yet to be realized. Anna had started documenting the events of the Longborough Affair, as it was now being called, in more detail, but in the absence of Lamb and O’Malley’s contributions, or any sense of urgency, her enthusiasm had waned. Anna had not left her house, aside from taking Cletus for walks, since the coming of the late winter chill, with most of that time spent under the warm covers of her bed.

  “It is good to see you again, too,” she said, reaching out to pat the mutt’s head.

  Anna climbed lazily out of bed, stretching as she rose, and donned her slippers. She pulled a thick cotton bathrobe from her closet. When she put it on over her pajamas, the stiffness of her shirt pocket caught her attention. Anna removed a faded slip of paper from the pocket. It was the folded sheet from von Juntz’s notebook in her dream.

  “How did that get there?” she said to Cletus. The dog cocked his head with curiosity.

  Now thoroughly awake, Anna stepped from the bedroom, and crossed the hallway to the room she used as an office. The bulk of the two-story house that she re
nted was empty. The majority of the missing owner’s belongings were stored in the basement. Anna knew what had happened to Meyer Kovacs, the Reister University anthropologist who owned the house and had become a powerful sorcerer in the imaginary world created by the mystic, Brian Teplow, but his demise was not generally known. The unnerving gaze from the portrait of Kovac’s late wife seemed to follow Anna as she crossed the length of the hall.

  The office was even colder than the rest of the house. Anna had not been in there in over a week, and she kept the doors closed to contain Cletus’ wanderings. The room was sparsely furnished as well. Although the walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, even above and below the window, Anna’s meager possessions now occupied only two shelves.

  Anna scanned the spines of her books for something relevant, but her scholarship had been in the culture of the Eastern European Vikings, the Varangians, and not American history. Anna sat at the desk. Her notebook was open to the last entry in her Longborough account:

  Doctor Strickland, Jack Barnes, and the woman from the Exotic Tea and Spice Shop had all been Utgarda in disguise. The real Strickland was an elderly man. Jack Barnes, the notorious Wellersberg nightclub operator, claimed no knowledge of the Exotic Tea and Spice Shop, which did not and never had existed behind the House of Delights Chinese restaurant.

  Anna closed the notebook and opened another. In it, she wrote her recollections of the dream. She described the Mesoamerican city, and Brian Teplow’s iconography, the walkways floating over the stagnant lake, and the giant, long-nosed crocodiles in it. She noted the small, degenerate people with the large, pointed ears and large eyes, the Draunskur, and the Pointees of Goh-Bazh in the crowd. And she listed Sobak as the prisoner of a giant crocodile man, the old English archaeologist Cornelius Lyton, and her adversary Wolfram von Juntz, a German archaeologist. Anna then considered the other sensations. There had been the persistent smell of dead foliage and the ever-present darkness and gloom,

  Anna was intrigued. Even though she had not been real, and they had only met once, the memory of Sobak, the little sister of her alter-ego, Nygof the Spy, still weighed on Anna’s emotions. The girl had been devoted to her older sister, and truly heartbroken at Anna’s departure. For the first time since she had cloistered herself in her home, Anna was moved to action.

  After dressing for the season, including a thick wool sweater, a long wool coat, a scarf, hat, and gum boots, Anna leashed Cletus and stepped out the front door. The top of the two steps to the ground were now even with the height of the snow. Cletus pulled Anna off the stoop and she sank up over the top of her boots. She cursed under her breath as cold dampness permeated her stockinged feet.

  The damage done, Anna forced herself to ignore the discomfort. She plodded across the small front yard as Cletus led her to the gate. The sidewalk on the opposite side, as well as the street, had been cleared, and once on solid footing, Anna took charge and walked Cletus purposely toward the Reister University campus a few blocks away.

  The intermittent neighborhoods were residential. The two-story Victorian homes were nearly identical. Most of the residents worked for the university or rented rooms to students. With attendance down at the university, several of the houses were currently vacant, though their For Rent signs had been taken down to deter squatters. Nevertheless, the Wellersburg Police were patrolling the area more frequently to evict illegal occupants.

  Anna had not offered her spare rooms, either for rent or for pity. She saw the lines waiting outside in the cold for the soup that the Salvation Army provided, and people standing forlornly on the street corners begging for change, but she had not been moved to altruism in spite of her unusually good situation. She tried to keep a low profile. This was aided by her dated wardrobe and a minimal use of cosmetics. But her good standing and air of purpose made her financial stability apparent to the unfortunates, who regarded her with either envy or contempt.

  Anna was far from defenseless, but she had had to prove her mettle on more than one occasion when ruffians had demanded her valuables. After third encounter, Anna had taken to bringing Cletus with her when she left the house. The presence of the big, black , muscular dog deterred any further attempts.

  They walked briskly. Cletus had a short coat and did not like the cold. He did his business in a snowbank along their way. Generally, he was laid back. At home, he spent most of his time laying at Anna’s feet or sprawled against her in the bed. Anna welcomed the dog’s warmth. Cletus seemed to recognize who Anna accepted and gazed warily at those she showed reservations toward.

  ◆

  Cletus barked in his deep voice as they entered the Faculty Dining Room. Eliezer Feldman, Director of the Reister University Library and Chairman of the Longborough Foundation, stood at the sound and gestured for Anna to come to the table, where he sat alone. Anna complied, and before she sat, Polly, the waitress, set a bowl of water on the tile floor for Cletus, who sat and accepted Polly’s pats on his flank.

  “May I have —” Anna started to say tentatively.

  “Dr. Rykov will have two poached eggs, some bacon, hashed browns, and black coffee,” Feldman interjected. “And bring some sausage patties for the dog.” Before Anna could react, the waitress stepped away toward the kitchen.

  “I can order for myself, thank you,” Anna said indignantly.

  “In your condition,” Feldman replied, “I doubt you should be making any decisions.” He scrutinized her for a moment, and then added, “You look terrible. Are you feeling well?”

  “I am feeling perfectly fine,” Anna replied. “But I had a very strange dream.” Anna related the events of her jungle adventure over her breakfast. Feldman sat and listened silently, sipping his tea, considering the tale. When Anna produced the slip of paper, the librarian’s eyes went wide.

  “And you say the Englishman’s name was Lyton?” he asked, seemingly oblivious to the paper.

  “That is correct,” Anna said with confusion. “Why do you ask?”

  “It just so happens that a Dr. Cornelius Lyton, an archaeologist from Oxford, will be coming to see me this afternoon.”

  “What is his area of study?” Anna asked.

  “Dr. Lyton has done extensive fieldwork in British Honduras regarding Mayan iconography.”

  “And why is he coming here?”

  “He didn't say in his telegram, simply that it is on Foundation business.”

  “Very curious,” Anna said, then put her finger on the paper. “But this is what concerns me right now. How did it get in my pocket? It was not there when I went to sleep, and I had never seen this symbol before it appeared in my dream last night. And what of Sobak? How does my fictional little sister fit into this?”

  Chapter 4

  March 9, 1930

  Feldman continued considering Anna’s dream while she researched their expected guest. They waited for him in Feldman’s office at the Reister University Library.

  “You said that the settlement you witnessed was dedicated to a giant crocodile man?”

  “That is correct. And his soldiers were human-sized crocodile men.”

  “Well, as you probably know, Sobek, with an E, was an Egyptian god with the body of a man and the head of a crocodile. Perhaps your subconscious linked the two names and put them together in your dream.”

  “Perhaps,” Anna conceded, “but that does not explain this symbol, which is not in an Egyptian style, nor how it appeared in my pocket.” She thought for a moment, and then added, “And the Egyptian god had the body of a man and the head of a crocodile. The being in my dream and its minions were actual bipedal crocodiles.”

  Cletus put his head in Anna's lap, a gesture of concern intended to distract her when he sensed that something was bothering her. Anna rubbed gently between his eyes, by now an unconscious response, and the dog thumped his tail loudly against the table.

  “Lyton has been in the field for almost nine years,” Anna noted. “But he has not published anything in all that time.”r />
  “My contacts at the Royal Society said that they had presumed him lost. They have had no communications from him since 1923. Several people sent to find out what happened to him never returned. He made contact a few months ago to arrange for a return to England. Claimed he had never seen anyone searching for him.”

  “You have no information as to why this British archaeologist wants to see you?” Anna asked before sipping from a glass of water.

  “I’m afraid not. His telegram was rather cryptic. It must have cost a small fortune from the Yucatan.”

  “He is coming here from Central America?” Anna said, swallowing the water in her mouth before she sprayed across the desk. She collected herself. “I had assumed that he was somewhere in the United States already. Where did he dock?”

  “Lyton didn’t convey his travel arrangements. The telegram arrived here yesterday evening.” Feldman pulled the sheet from his desk and handed it to Anna. The message had been sent from the British Government House in Belize City three weeks earlier.

  DR E. FELDMAN

  LONGBOROUGH FOUNDATION

  WELLERSBURG, NY

  URGENT MATTER. NEED SPECIAL TALENTS. ARRIVE BY NOON TRAIN WEDS 3/10/30.

  DR C. LYTON

  Something nagged at the back of Anna’s mind. How did Lyton know exactly when he would arrive in Wellersberg? It was unlikely that every leg of his journey would be on schedule, even if he made all of his connections.

  Something was very odd about this fellow.

  ◆

  Anna’s assessment of their visitor was correct. She started when Cletus emitted a low growl. The round, balding, older man she had met in her dream had appeared at Feldman’s door, dressed in a suit of scraps and patches in mismatched colors and fabrics, and a derby hat. Anna had to contain herself lest she break out in laughter, but the dog bristled.