by T C Donivan
“I counted half a dozen and Tree Owl killed one,” she answered.
I nodded. “That’s what I saw. What should we do?”
“I don’t know. We need the high ground, or a defensible position. This is neither,” she said, her eyes scanning the ramparts.
“Spencer’s out in the open! I have to go to him!” I said.
Annie held her rifle with one hand and gripped my jacket with the other. She put her face close to mine. “You can’t, they’ll kill you.”
“We have no choice. We can’t stay here even we wanted to, we have no water.”
“We can live for days without water. No Indian is so patient he can wait that long for his prey. He’ll wander off long before we die of thirst. All we have to do is find a hole to hide in that they can’t get to us,” she said.
“What about the others?” I asked.
“Hang the others! All I care about are you and me,” she said fiercely.
“No, I can’t leave Spencer,” I told her.
“You are a stubborn man,” she said.
A thought formed on her lips, but before she could speak it, a black masked warrior appeared as if by magic behind her. Annie’s eyes grew wide and I knew the same apparition had appeared before her as well. As if in a fantastic choreography, neither of us moved from where we crouched, but each raised our weapons, Annie leveling the rifle over my shoulder and I the pistol over hers. The Indian in my line of sight came at us like greased lightning. I squeezed the trigger, barely taking aim. The explosions of the two weapons in such close proximity was deafening. Blue smoke burned my eyes.
I pushed Annie aside as the Indian came at me, seemingly unfazed by the blast of the pistol, though I was sure I could not have missed at such close range. He barreled into me, knocking me backwards into a broken stone wall. Sharp pain jarred my spine. I tried to aim the pistol again, but could only use it to flail as a club. A tomahawk flashed above my head. With my free hand I clutched the wrist that held it. Steel fingers wrapped themselves around my throat and began to choke the life out of me as I struggled to keep the tomahawk at bay.
A blur of brown whipped past me as the butt of Annie’s rifle smashed into the face of my attacker, shattering his mask. Blood and teeth spattered against my face as the hand released my throat. As I bounded to my feet, Annie clubbed the villain a second time, flattening the side of his skull. He did not move again. She threw the rifle aside and drew Spencer’s pistol as she twisted about in expectation of another attack. None came.
“You all right?” She asked breathlessly.
I saw the words, more than heard, my ears having been partially deafened by blast of the gunshots. I could not speak, only nod as I felt my throat, expecting to find puncture wounds or blood. Luckily, I seemed to be intact. I saw her Indian splayed across the rocky floor, dead, only inches from where my back had been turned to him. Annie had shot him through the head, killing him instantly. Taking in the scene, I realized how deadly quick were the instincts of the native savages, and those like Annie, who made their living among them. I felt myself a child by comparison, my confidence ebbing away. Annie could, no doubt, see the internal drama in my eyes, for she quickly took charge of the situation. She put her mouth close to my ear that I might hear her.
“There’s only three of them left now. That alley over there runs beneath the cliff. You go first with your short gun and I’ll keep a look out for the roof over us. We have to move quick, but careful.”
We started down the alley. My heart was pounding like a drum. Every turn was a blind corridor cast in dark shadows. I held the Colt with hammer cocked, terrified at every turn. My hearing returned quickly. The city was quiet as the tomb; the only sound, rocks scrambling beneath our feet, each sounding like boulders tumbling down a hillside in the tomb-like vacuum of the cemetery city. We had come up a different way and soon I was lost. We stopped, hunkered down at a point where the alley gave way to an open ramp.
“Where are we, do you know?” I asked.
Annie shook her head. “I think Spencer was over there,” she said pointing a hundred yards to the right.
We heard a savage yell as if an attack had begun in the place we had last seen our helpless companion. Without a word, we both stood up, fearless of being seen, and started off at a trot, scrambling over the smashed walls. Twice we nearly stumbled into open pits, whose fall would have crippled, if not killed us. Coming onto a narrow path between two walls, I tripped over a body and fell, cursing. I found myself entangled with an arrow riddled corpse. I stared with horror into the dead, open eyes of Dr. Zenobia. Annie pulled me to my feet and we went on, slowly now, sure we were at the scene of the battle we had heard begin minutes ago. I detected a liquid sound, like the bubbling of a spring. Crouching lower, Annie at my side, I rounded a corner. Two black masked warriors lay dead at the feet of Tree Owl who was sprawled, back against a wall, two terrible wounds in his chest. All caution rushed from my head. I ran to him, but Annie held back.
“There’s one more, where is he?” She called out.
I knelt beside Tree Owl and put a hand to the gaping hole in his side. The wound had the look of raw meat badly butchered. Blood pumped out of at an alarming rate. I pressed against it helplessly, blood seeping between my fingers. He looked up at me mournfully.
“Go on now without me Clayton. I will see you on the other side.”
He closed his eyes and tried to chant, but by then his strength was gone and the only sound he could produce was the burbling death rattle that had led me to him. His breathing became shallow and stopped finally, but the blood continued to pump from his wound. I felt as if I would go mad with rage and sorrow. All fear had been driven from my head.
I stood up and called out, “Clayton, where are you?”
No answer came. Annie joined me in the chorus, neither of us afraid now of the lone Indian who remained, the spirit of vengeance having overtaken us. We rushed through the ruins, searching for our remaining friends. Solitude reigned, there seeming to be no living creatures left in the city except the two of us. We heard soft footsteps and halted in our tracks, expecting another fight. Instead, Mozart and Sosanna emerged from a dusty alleyway. We hugged them in greeting.
“We stayed hidden until we heard you calling,” he said.
We told them what had happened to the others and started back to the horses. The animals were where we had left them, heads bowed, blissfully eating the short spring grass. Spencer sat at their feet, clothes spattered in blood, rubbing his hands in the dirt, Mordecai beside him. Annie and I raced to him. The blood was not his own. He was uninjured, except for scrapes and bruises. Spencer grinned at us with his madcap grin.
“Tree Owl told me to stay with the horses.”
“I’m glad.”
“Did he kill the devil spirits?” He asked.
“Yes he did Spencer. Tree Owl saved us all,” Annie told him.
He noticed my bloody hands. “Are you hurt Clayton?”
I stared at my gore covered hands and I began to weep for Tree Owl and Zenobia.
“No Spencer, I’m not,” I said.
Chapter 27 – Katabasis
We buried Zenobia the next day in the forest just below the city. In accordance with Cheyenne burial customs, we placed Tree Owl high up in a Juniper Tree with a good view of the city he had led us to. The sixth Indian was never found, if such there had been. The five dead ones, Annie identified as Navajo. All were clad in black rawhide masks with slits cut out for eyeholes and ceremonial tunics covered in brilliant beadwork. As Annie’s knowledge of the tribe was limited, she had no idea what purpose the masks served, or why the Indians would have chosen to attack us.
“The city may be a holy shrine to them,” she said.
Mozart spoke as one with authority, “This was an Anasazi city, as Tree Owl said. The Navajo have no use for it. I suspect they were on a spirit quest and we interfered with it,” he told us.
“You’re an expert,” I said caustically. My pati
ence with the little man was at an ending. I could brook no more of his mystic mumblings.
“I know many things,” he said.
“Then why didn’t you warn us about this? Two more good friends are dead. You have no more knowledge of the future than a tree stump.”
“I mourn for our friends as much as you Clayton, but I had no control over their fate. I’ve tried to tell both you and Spencer that before, but you never listen.” He put his face near mine and lightly clapped the side of my head. “You have ears, use them!” I grabbed the insolent fool by his jacket and shook him. Both Annie and Sosanna ran to his defense.
“Clayton, stop it!” Annie demanded. I let him go and stormed away. Sosanna cradled the small, dark man in her arms.
“We must find Rachel,” Spencer said.
I looked at him with pity. He sat by the fire, rocking like the senile old men in Concord who’d retired from the sea. I’d laughed at them as a boy and regretted it now. I sat down beside him.
“I’m sorry Spencer, but we have to start back,” I said gently.
Mozart knelt on the other side of him. “Tonight we shall begin our adventure old friend.” Spencer smiled and nodded. I got up and motioned Mozart to follow me.
Once we were out of earshot of Spencer I rounded on him again, “Don’t lie to him! You know it’s over. Take your woman and go wherever you want. Annie and I will take Spencer with us to San Francisco. We’ll get him back to his family in New York.”
Mozart was calm in his response. “Bear with me one more day Clayton. Tree Owl was right, this place is holy. It holds a portal to the other world that the living can access as well as the dead. There are only a few like it in the world. One is near Jerusalem. You might remember the story of the man who rose from the dead after three days.”
“When they rolled away the stone, the tomb was empty,” Annie said. She had joined us.
Mozart turned to her. “Yes, and there are other portals as well, in a cave along the Euphrates, in the Black Forest of Germany and others, still undiscovered.”
“And all we have to do is simply walk through this door and we will find ourselves in heaven?” I asked.
“Or hell,” he replied.
Annie was thoughtful. “I don’t know what I believe anymore, but I was raised Christian and the living do not cross over and back again from either heaven or hell at leisure.”
For the first time in Annie’s presence, Mozart assumed his stately persona, his speech patterns becoming those of an Oxford Don. “You are an educated woman Annie Kestrel, within limits. You know that the sun is a massive ball of fire don’t you?” She nodded her head. “Good, you know also that fire is energy. Anything that can burn contains the material that composes elemental energy. The human body and everything on Earth is made up of the same material you find inside the sun, so it’s only logical that the spirit is made up of energy as well. It exists at the most basic level of the construction of our physical bodies. There is no instrument capable of recording it, nor will there be for centuries, if ever. This energy migrates after death into the place you call heaven, or hell and back again into another living host.” He pointed toward the city. “But here, in this place, a part of the living spirit energy can pass into the other world and return to the land of the living, once its mission is complete.”
His explanation was both confusing and absurd, but such was his demeanor, I felt a chill run through me as if an Old Testament prophet had delivered a hidden revelation. My hand automatically went out to Annie’s. Our fingers entwined and we stood as children before this mystic charlatan. I conceded.
“For Spencer’s sake, I will allow one more day. But we cannot dally. If there was another Indian, he may return with his cohorts for revenge. Our fighting strength is down to Annie and me and I don’t count for much,” I told him.
Mozart smiled benevolently. “I understand Clayton. Tonight, after the moon has set, we shall cross over to the other side.”
Though I did not wish to give credence to any part of the sham, I had to debate one point of logic. “Even if everything you say is true, how will we be able to bring Rachel back? She’s dead. She has no body on this side of the rift.”
Mozart smiled faintly. “A good point Clayton. I don’t claim to know everything. My knowledge is, in fact, extremely limited. I know only the few corridors of Eternity’s Compass that I have traveled. All I know is that Spencer will have to make sacrifices if he is to save Rachel. How it ends, this I swear, I truly do not know.”
He went back to Sosanna and got out his flute and began to play. The melody was unearthly, producing weird feelings of melancholy and dread in me. Annie and I huddled close after supper and dozed as we waited for the moon to set above the cliffs. I fell into a dream. In it, I walked through the darkened streets of the ruined city. I came finally to a dark, musty room. Tree Owl was there. The wound still gaped in his side, but it no longer bled. He chanted softly. I was overwhelmed by emotion. He stopped and spoke to me in that distinctive, clipped way that Indians do.
“I’m glad to see you my friend.”
“And I’m so happy to see you,” I said.
“Are you coming to visit me?”
My mind reeled at the impossibility of what he asked. “I can’t, you’re dead,” I told him.
Though he said nothing, I could tell I had hurt his feelings. “You are wrong Clayton, I am still among the living.” I felt his spirit begin to slip away.
“Don’t go,” I pleaded.
He spoke once more before fading away into the dream, “Be careful of the little man. If he is a trickster, you will be chased through Hell forever.”
I awoke with a start. Annie was still clutched beside me. The others were asleep. The fire had guttered down, sending sparks into the chill, night air. I watched as the floating embers drifted away into the void. Little bits of spirits on their voyage into eternity I wondered.
****
Climbing into the ruins of the ancient city at such an ungodly hour was both dangerous and exhausting. I felt bone weary by the time we found the room Mozart had designated as the portal to the other world. I grinned in mocking despair at the sad destination of the long journey that had cost us two, dear friends. We stood in a dry, dark chamber that had been burrowed into the uppermost level of the city against the canyon wall. Bits of broken pottery and human bones littered the floor. The place had the feel of a mortuary. We built a small fire with armloads of kindling we had carried up with us. Mozart cast a handful of a dry, powdery substance into the flames. It sputtered and smoked, exuding a noxious fume. My head began to swim at the close atmosphere.
“Time is an invention,” Mozart said.
I stared at him. “Do you wish to engage in a philosophic discussion?”
“This is important. Listen to me,” he challenged.
I considered the argument. “I agree, the measurement of time is an invention of man, but time itself is quantifiable. The Earth turns round the sun, the moon turns round the Earth. We are born, the body ages, we die.”
“That is not true. Those are merely points on a road map already plotted long before you, or I, or this planet existed. Time itself is an invention of man. In reality, all the actions that take place in the physical world are happening simultaneously, separated by space, but connected by the invisible spokes of a wheel that revolve around the hub of eternity,” Mozart said.
The notion was ridiculous. “Nonsense,” I countered.
“I know it’s like trying to explain stellar navigation to a child, but you’ll come round to it eventually,” he said not unkindly.
“You speak like a scholar when you choose to. Where did you acquire such knowledge?” I asked.
“From all around me. From the air, from the Earth. All the history of humankind is there to breathe in if you let it. Remember what I said Clayton. Now let us begin.”
We stood in a circle, holding hands, Annie on my right, Spencer my left, facing Mozart and Sosanna. Mordecai
lay at Spencer’s feet. I prayed for the nonsense to end quickly so that we could return to our camp in the good, clean air of the forest outside the dead city’s gates. I heard coyotes begin to howl in the distance, baying at the moonless sky. I held Annie’s warm hand tight within my own. Spencer’s palm was slick with cold sweat.
“Banshees,” Spencer whispered.
“Hush,” Mozart warned.
The handful of powder he cast into the fire had turned into a thick, blue fog that permeated the room. Electricity, as one feels before a lightning storm, filled the confined space. I felt an instinct to run. I knew that Annie would have come with me, but I could not abandon Spencer. For his sake, against my better judgment, I let the charade continue. Mozart’s voice rang out in clear, crystal, rhythmic tones.
“May the spirits who guide, answer our call.
Open the gates between heaven and hell that we may fall.”
Simple doggerel I thought. Then the solid cliff wall behind him began to shift like the surface of a murky lake. I stared into it curiously. It opened into a shadowy passage that led into the side of the mountain. Illusion I concluded. The smoke must be laced with a plant, such as Deadly Nightshade, or Hemp, that alters the mind. Despite my rationalization, I could not only see the face of the cliff fall away, but feel a torrid breeze and smell the scent of wildflowers that were not yet in bloom. An aura of monstrous otherworldliness such as I felt when my grandmother had told her ghost stories in the old house in the woods suddenly tumbled from the portal in psychic waves.
“Quickly now, move toward the entrance. Spencer first, then Annie and Clayton,” Mozart said.
Mozart and Sosanna broke the circle, extending the sphere into a simple line whose farthest point they formed. We edged, crab-like toward the abyss. I looked to Annie. She wore a look of semi-terror tempered with intrepid wonderment on her face. I knew we should stop, but I could not bring myself to break the spell. The portal was black as midnight, its surface that of a muddy, dead body of water. Mozart and Sosanna released us and stood on either side of the purported gate into eternity.