Ghost Dance

by T C Donivan

  Spencer stroked his chin, posing like a young Greek God, the firelight casting his profile in shapes Michelangelo would gladly have sculpted in marble. I realized he had not only regained all his former beauty, but exceeded it somehow.

  “We should have a mythology of our own, don’t you think? America deserves one no less than the classical cultures. We are a noble people,” Spencer said.

  “America is a nation of orphaned bastards, outcasts, the ne’er do wells, troublemakers and malcontents who were either cast out, or fled their home countries in poverty. As such, they have no national character. You must invent one. You must have heroes. You must create a unique American myth,” Tyrus said.

  “Illusion you mean,” Zenobia retorted.

  “They are the same,” Tyrus replied.

  “We don’t need a pack of lies to define who we are,” I argued.

  “You may not, but others will,” Tyrus told me.

  “To maintain order? To control men in the same, arbitrary fashion kings do?” I asked.

  “There will be a conflict for every generation so that they will come to love war and despise peace.”

  “You make Machiavelli sound like a Samaritan,” I said.

  “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God,” Annie said.

  Spencer smirked at her. “Have you become a prophet? Must everything inspire a Biblical quote?”

  “Her points are as valid as yours,” I said defensively.

  “Love blinds a man,” Spencer said. He stared into the fire. “You could destroy ninety percent of the human race and not miss it.”

  “How would you breed such a nation?” Zenobia wondered.

  “Divide and conquer through fear and jealousy, set one class against another,” Tyrus said.

  “You astound me,” I said in awe.

  Tyrus was not through. “But the story must be entertaining. That was the origin of the old myths. I’ve met men who were there. Imagine, Greek traders sitting around the campfire, inventing the tales of Apollo and Athena. And, of course, you must have a villain, such as Ares and Minos. They explain the universe, good and evil. They give hope and purpose. So will the American myth, in time.”

  “You proselytize,” I said.

  “I am a believer,” he answered with priest-like conviction.

  “Why do you all argue about this? Nothing is important except getting out of here!” Annie exclaimed.

  Her fingernails bit into the palm of my hand drawing blood. In the heat of the debate I hadn’t realized her distress.

  “It’s all right, we won’t talk about it anymore,” I said.

  Her eyes were large and scared and full of fury. “It isn’t this inane blather, but that none of you seem to care we could be trapped her forever.”

  “We’ll let it go then,” I said.

  She closed her eyes and drew away from me. “Go on, finish it. Talk it all to death if it makes you feel better. It’s what you do.” I was hurt by her words and determined to say no more. She regained her composure and gave me a wan smile. “Ask him, you have to know,” she said.

  Reluctantly, I turned back to Tyrus. “So what is this myth?” I asked.

  “The solitary man, alone on the frontier, taming the wilderness, protecting the simple peasants from the savage horde, defeating his Ares. He is self-reliant, brave to a fault, filled with an uncompromising morality.”

  I thought of Bog Trotter and Hawker and the other frontiersmen I had met and laughed out loud. “Have you met any of our American heroes?” I asked.

  “You did, in the pages of Fenimore Cooper,” Spencer said.

  Tyrus spread his arms wide. “The author inspires the boy and the boy becomes the man.”

  “You are a liar,” Arsinoe grumbled.

  Tyrus stared her down with his empty eyes. “I know you and your wolfling.”

  Arsinoe leapt across the fire like a panther and grabbed Tyrus by the throat. The two of them tumbled into the tall grass, rolling and flailing at one another. Despite being considerably smaller, Arsinoe quickly gained the upper hand, pinning Tyrus to the ground and beating him savagely. When I came to Tyrus’s defense, Arsinoe shoved an elbow in my gut, knocking the wind from me. I stood, doubled over gasping, while Spencer and the others wrestled the two apart.

  Tyrus lay upon the ground, holding a hand to his cut and bruised face. He poked a finger at Spencer as if casting judgment. “Murderer of kings.”

  With a ferocious thrust, Arsinoe tore herself loose from her captors. She pulled a long knife from her shirt and fell upon Tyrus, stabbing him through the heart before we could stop her. A fountain of blood gurgled up, spouting like a mountain spring from Tyrus’s chest. I had not thought it possible for a wound to produce such a volume of blood, or expel it from the body with such force. Arsinoe lay atop him, drenched in gore, grunting and chuckling like a lunatic. Spencer and Zenobia disarmed the murderess and tied her to a tree. Now that the deed was done, she offered no resistance.

  Annie tended to Tyrus, brushing the hair from his eyes and crossing his arms on his chest before she covered him with a blanket. She knelt beside the body and lowered her head in prayer.

  I nodded at Arsinoe. “What shall we do with her?”

  “We need her to get us to Ezekiel’s City,” Spencer said.

  Sebastian stood apart from us. His small, frightened eyes blazing with fire. “I say send her to hell! It’s where all women belong!” A weary laugh tumbled from my lips at the absurdity of the notion. “Do you find that funny?” He asked trying to sound menacing.

  Like Spencer, my patience with the boy was near run out. I started to speak, but Zenobia answered for me, “No, of course he doesn’t Sebastian. It’s the insanity of it all I suppose.”

  “I should think not. Tyrus was a dear man. He did not deserve to be slain by this slut,” Sebastian said, tears in his voice.

  Spencer bellowed, the sound like the roar of a lion, “I’m tired of all this pretense. If the idiot child doesn’t already know he’s in Hell, it’s high time he found out.”

  “What do you mean?” Sebastian asked.

  “You’re dead you fool, this is Purgatory and you’ll never find your way out until you can accept that,” Spencer told him.

  Sebastian looked stunned for a moment, then slowly, a grin spread across his face. “Always the wit, eh old chum?”

  Spencer lowered his voice to a reasonable pitch, “And while we’re at it, you might as well know that Zenobia is your father and you’re his bastard son.” Sebastian lunged at Spencer, but he easily subdued him, pinning his arms to his sides as if he were a child. “Face up to it! Be a man,” Spencer exhorted.

  Sebastian began to sob. Spencer let him go and he sank to the ground weeping, feebly pounding the dead grass with his smallish fists. Zenobia went to him, speaking softly in his ear. We moved away to let them be alone.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked Spencer.

  He spat his words at me with an intensity I’d rarely seen in him. “It’s time we all accepted what we’re up against. Tyrus’s simpleminded illusions won’t do us any good here.”

  “You’ve grown cruel Spencer,” Annie told him.

  “And you’ve grown religious. How is it your faith has returned now that we’re in Hell?” He asked.

  His words stung Annie as if he’d struck her in her face. I held her hand and lashed back at him, “You’re not the same man since you’ve returned to us. What’s happened to you?”

  “Have you forgotten Rachel? We still haven’t found her and all the pair of you can do is try to find a way out to save your own scrawny hides.” He nodded at Annie. “Love blinds a man. It has you and it did me. If we lose our purpose here, we’ll end up like the others, only lost forever according to Mozart. Focus Clayton, focus! And you too Annie,” he pleaded.

  The three of us went back to the campfire. I felt as if a bottomless hole had opened in the pit of my stomach from my inherent cowardice. It was clear to me
that I desired only one thing, escape from this terrible place. We worked in silence, picking up the scattered cups and plates from our supper as if nothing untoward had happened. Zenobia and Sebastian had gone away from the fire to where we’d tethered the horses to continue their discussion. I thought nothing of it until I heard the crack of a pistol. I turned in time to see Zenobia fall to the ground. Sebastian stood beside him with a revolver in his hand.

  “Jesus, not another!” I exclaimed.

  Sebastian pointed the pistol at us and fired. We ducked into the grass. I tried to cover Annie with my body but she pushed me down beside her.

  “Stay low,” she said.

  I heard Spencer shout something and saw Mordecai streak across the camp. Sebastian screamed as the dog crashed into his chest, snarling and snapping. We were immediately on our feet. Spencer removed the beast from the boy and took away the pistol. We went to Zenobia. His eyes were open, but flickering wildly as if beating out a secret code. A pool of red stained a point on his chest above his heart, but the blood did not bubble out so wildly as it had Tyrus.

  “Doctor, what can we do?” I asked stupidly.

  Zenobia stared up at me. “It’s good I went like this Clayton. I didn’t want to tell you, but I’ve been losing my mind. Every day I remember less my life. Dr. Zenobia would soon cease to exist.”

  “No, please don’t go away,” I said.

  He tried to smile but the effort pained him. “How can a man die twice? I thought the only way out of here was to be born into another life?” He squeezed my hand. “If you find the answer Clayton, let me know.” He closed his eyes then took a ragged breath and passed away for the second time in as many days.

  Sebastian sat with his legs gathered up in front of him, his arms wrapped around his knees, the dog beside him, fangs bared. “He made my mother a whore. I had to defend the family honor,” he said in a whispery voice.

  I stood up, fists balled, every fiber of my being wishing to exact vengeance, but Annie stopped me.

  “Come away Clayton, perhaps none of this is real,” she said.

  “You’d better listen to the lady. It’s time we left these fools,” Arsinoe called out.

  “Not with you,” I said.

  She cast a grim smile at us. “We need to do it quick, before the vultures come. They can smell dead meat from a thousand miles in this hell hole and they’re none too choosy if supper is stiff or still on the hoof,” she said. Silence fell over the camp as if a clammy hand had descended on us. Arsinoe played the moment masterfully. “These aren’t your garden variety Turkey Buzzards. They have leathery wings that measure fifteen feet from tip to tip. They can strip the flesh from the bone in five minutes like fish in the Amazon. No, you don’t want to be here when they arrive and it will be soon. We have two fresh corpses.”

  “Is she lying?” Annie asked.

  The air of the forest had become dead still. A sudden breeze shifted the branches above our heads. I looked to the starless sky expectantly. “I don’t think so.”

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

  We quickly packed our horses, waiting to untie Arsinoe until the last moment.

  “Sebastian, come with us,” I said, not wishing to leave him for the carrion eaters regardless of his infamy.

  He shuffled listlessly about the ruined death camp. “No, I have to take care of my friends. You go on, I’ll meet you later.” His eyes were infinite pools of sorrow. He tried smiling at me, but the effort only made his face appear a skull’s mask. “I wanted to say again, I’m sorry for the time I left you to the Indians Clayton. I hope you’ll forgive me for it someday, because I can’t forgive myself, for anything.”

  “Come on, we haven’t much time,” I pleaded. His face became flat and emotionless. A stranger peered back at me.

  Annie walked her pony beside mine. “Leave it Clayton. He has to find his own way.”

  I mounted my unruly pony and the four of us rode away from the horrible scene. As we stumbled down the wintry mountainside in the darkness, we heard the flutter of leathery wings overheard.

  Chapter 32 – The Alcyonian Lake

  As morning broke, we rode out of the mountains, the snowstorm swirling behind us like an illusion as the air turned hot and stagnant again. We stood on the banks of a dry riverbed at the base of the cliffs. A gorge that had once held a body of water as great as the Mississippi lay empty except for a few muddy puddles of stagnant alkali. Ugly little birds on misshapen legs danced in the water, dipping yellowed beaks into the fetid pools. The riverbed gradually fell away into a silted salt flat. Beyond that, a mile distant, a greenish prairie smooth as glass glittered in the sun which had finally emerged from the clouds. A band of ragged people struggled on foot across the salt flat. I pitied them. Arsinoe pointed into the distance.

  “This was the Superstition River and that is the Alcyonian Lake.”

  “Where?” I asked. She pointed again. “That’s a grass prairie,” I said.

  She gave me a pitying look. “That isn’t grass, it’s water overgrown with moss and algae. It ran once within a hundred yards of where we stand. Then the drought came and the demons in the city dammed it up and turned this into a desert.”

  Spencer got down from his horse and held a rock between his fingers. It crumbled into dust. “How long has the drought lasted?” He asked.

  “Five hundred years,” she said.

  Spencer looked out across the parched plain, “And God said unto them; be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it.” He cast a wry look at Annie. “You see, as Godless as I am, I can quote scripture too.”

  “It inspires the mind to search for answers, but there are none,” Annie said.

  “How did you come to know all this? I thought our good friend Sam, or Sartre, or whatever his name is, said that no man or woman had ever returned from these mountains,” Spencer asked.

  “Maybe I’m neither man nor woman, or maybe the old fool simply lies,” Arsinoe answered.

  We started out across the arid lake. The weather was hot and dry as one would imagine it in hell. The sun beat down unmercifully. As we progressed, I could make out the green waters of the Alcyonian Lake clearly. They were still as death and stretched as far as the eye could see.

  “How will we cross the lake?” I asked.

  “One may float or one may fly. There are ways. We will build a boat from the rotten wood and iron hulls the demons left behind when they retreated to the city. We will bind them up with gum from the marrow of the driftwood,” the enigmatic little woman said.

  As she had promised, we found a plethora of abandoned boats that lay discarded on the desiccated shores of the lake. Under her direction, we assembled a hull of twenty feet in length and four foot wide with three foot gunwales. We hoisted a ragged canvas sail to its mast and secured an oar as a rudder. It was an ungainly thing and hard to navigate, but served its purpose. We turned the horses loose and pushed our boat out into the lake. A breeze billowed our sail as soon as we set out on the slimy, green waters. I thought of my brother in his whaling ship somewhere on the other side of eternity and wondered if I would ever see him again.

  The placid lake we had spied from the dry mouth of the Superstition River turned contentious as the shores of the lake disappeared from view. The sun fled once more behind the clouds and the day turned dark. Arsinoe served as our helmsman, steering the boat with a steady hand. Annie and I sat together in the prow, sea spray misting our eyes; attempting to steal a few moments peace while Spencer dozed, Mordecai at his feet.

  Annie was pensive. “Clayton, I want you to know, I haven’t retreated into religious dogma.”

  “You could do worse. In this place, you have to cling to whatever keeps you from going mad.”

  “It’s a point of reference, nothing more,” she said.

  “Like Dante’s Inferno.”

  She smiled. “That’s your reference isn’t it?”

  “It’s not a pleasant one.”


  “I’m no scholar. I envy you that. I think if I was, I could deal with this place better, maybe understand it a little,” she said.

  The notion tickled me despite the desperate situation we found ourselves in. “Harvard was no preparation for Hell.” We both laughed for the first time in days. “What do you want to do if we get out of this place?” I asked.

  “When we get out of this place,” she corrected, “I should like to go to California. They say the sun always shines there. I’ve had enough of gloomy skies.”

  “Not New York?”

  She shook her head. “No. It was my Eden when I was a child, but my grandparents are dead and there’s no one left there I care about. I know it would spoil it if I saw it again.”

  “Then we will make our home in California, if you’ll marry me,” I said.

  “I will,” Annie answered.

  She kissed me and we sat contentedly with our dreams. The wind had begun to whip the quiet waters into frothy waves. I held her close as flashes of lightning once more crackled on the horizon. I prayed silently we would reach shore before the storm came down upon us. A smile crossed my face.

  “What’s funny?” Annie asked.

  “I don’t consider myself religious, but I was praying just now. It’s a reflex I suppose.”

  Annie looked up at the sky. “Do you think God is here?”

  “The Christian God, or a god?” I asked.

  “Any god,” she answered.

  “I still think we’re dreaming,” I said, clinging desperately to the diminishing hope.

  “Some dreams are nightmares,” she said.

  “Why would any god put his hand to this kind of work?” I wondered.

  “How different is it from our world?”

  “I thought I was the cynic.”