Part 13 (1/2)

Hank didn't notice. ”Man, this has to be forgotten tribal grounds, or something. You think it's safe to go inside?” He shrugged off his pack and rummaged around until he retrieved a flashlight.

”Hank, that's not wise. It could be unstable. Could be a deadfall, or wild animals...” Don watched him click the light on and off. ”Really. I don't recommend this course of action. I know some fellows at the university. We'll head back to the house, give them a ring. Probably be a team out here tomorrow. Best to wait. Safe before sorry, eh?”

”Animals? Nah, no tracks. Hang tight. Be a sec.” Hank flashed the light at Don's face and then trundled away, pausing to examine the entrance; an ant inspecting a mausoleum. He scrunched his shoulders and ducked inside. His tiny beam of light vanished instantly.

”Oh, boy.” Don should've protested more strongly, made further attempts to stop the boy. He didn't possess the energy or the will. He settled onto a rotten log and unrolled a paper sandwich bag and huffed into it until he felt more well, and after he'd recovered a bit, he sipped brandy from the stash of mini-bottles in the bottom of his pack. Mich.e.l.le had stockpiled them from hundreds of international flights. He fidgeted.

The dolmen was an impossibility. Surveyors would've noted it ages ago, sitting as it did on county land. It had to be visible from the air and someone, somewhere would've laid in its coordinates, marked it on a topographical map. The Redfield Museum would have sent a team of photographers and archeologists. There would be a display, a doc.u.mentary, a book. If the dolmen existed, if it were possible, then it would be on the record and Don would know everything about it.

”I should've stopped that fool,” he said, fully aware of the absurdity of his wizened and decrepit self attempting to prevent a young thug such as Hank from doing whatever he wished. At twenty-five, h.e.l.l, even forty-five, Don would've cheerfully rabbit-punched the b.u.g.g.e.r and laid him out for a nap. He glanced at his knotted and knurled hands and winced in sorrow and regret. Meanwhile, a fractional piece of his worn soul was slightly interested in what might happen. For some reason he began to mutter the old advertising line Roaches check in, but they don't check out! And promptly forced himself to desist.

Time pa.s.sed and nothing happened, so he finished the brandy and tried Kurt's cell again, which came to naught, and then he cracked another little bottle and sipped that and waited, and as he waited, like the encroaching shadows of the forest, the shadows of dread in his subconscious lengthened and stretched across his entire mind. He was nervous that Hank didn't return, nervous that Kurt and Argyle didn't answer their phones, nervous that mid-afternoon was sliding past and the world remained a murky fairy ground that would soon enough become pitch dark and wholly dangerous. Certainly nervousness was in order. None of this explained his rising fear, an emotion more powerful by magnitudes than mere nervousness, however. Fear that crept from the middle of his belly and spread into his chest until he shook and sweated and imagined phantom music, phantom shrieks.

”Yes, love, it's going to get so dark,” Mich.e.l.le said. More leaves, floating in their death spirals to the ground. ”The servitors will be waking up.”

He clapped his hand over his mouth-Mich.e.l.le hadn't said anything; Don was talking to himself, and heaven have mercy, that wasn't a positive sign. Against his palm he said, ”Good grief, talking to myself? How long has this gone on?” No reply, not in his head, nor elsewhere.

In due course he heaved to his feet and shouted for bullheaded young Hank, received the echo of his own cry, m.u.f.fled and impotent. Even the crows and mosquitoes had fallen silent. By the reddish slant of a falling sunbeam, or configuration of shadow, a tree opposite the dolmen caught his eye. A redwood of significant girth, and as old as the hills, its limbs the size of smaller trees and its scales of bark as tall as a man. Easily one of the largest and h.o.a.riest specimens he'd seen north of California.

The broad sheaves of bark drew his attention from the dolmen and whatever drama occurred within; drew him shuffling and stumbling closer until his nose was inches away, and still he required a few more seconds before he recognized the hidden puzzle.

A symbol was etched into the wood at eye level; a reverse C, albeit with a narrower gap. The symbol was blackened and glazed and partially refilled by the growth of the tree, and it measured on the order of a basketball, and upon closer scrutiny, he beheld delicate variations and lines that suggested the object represented the spinal column of a sinuous creature, a serpent, although the skull was enlarged and cruelly horned. Of course, this was none other than the embossment upon the cover of The Black Guide.

He retreated several steps and the larger picture coalesced, natural splinters and fractures aligning to form a door, or hatch, in the bole of the tree. He recognized knotted sinews as hinges, a knothole as a latch in a sheaf of thick bark scarcely wider than his shoulders and thrice his height-a neatly fitted panel that blended into its surroundings as to be nigh-invisible. Braced against the trunk was a long, slender rod that tapered to a hook, not unlike the poles he used at university to open cla.s.sroom skylights. Obviously the crook was intended to snag the knothole and pop the panel ajar.

”Are you really thinking about it?” He imagined Mich.e.l.le clearly and unambiguously at his side, dressed in blue, a blue wrap and fancy sungla.s.ses disguising her expression. She was always her younger self in his daydreams, while he remained leathery and spent. He'd never been capable of matching her. ”Stop and use your brain. What's in there? A hunter's cache? Moldering pelts, spoiled meat? A drug lord's bale of cocaine? Or worse-a body! What if it's murder? This deep in the woods, it just might be nefarious. You're too old for nefarious doings, Don. Your hands are shaking, you're making pee drops in your underwear. Baby, you've got every reason to be afraid. The Black Guide is bad medicine. The worst. Don't pull a Hank on me. Sweetie, are you really going to do this?”

Don was indeed considering the crook and the panel and what might lay inside the hollow tree, although not from simple curiosity as might've compelled him once upon a time; dread compelled him, the way it compels a man to look into an abyss, to entertain the notion of leaping in. He actually touched the rod before jolting to his senses and withdrawing his hand as if from a snake. He wiped his sweaty brow and cleaned his gla.s.ses and walked back to the path and stood twenty yards from the entrance of the dolmen, that keyhole slot in its dour face, and called for Hank. Again nothing, and this time when he tried to ring Kurt and Argyle the pane said NO SERVICE.

The forest closed in and the air dimmed. He s.h.i.+vered, hot and cold, and zipped his coat as Mich.e.l.le would've chided him to do. He grimly studied the dolmen, hoping it might appear less gargantuan and pa.s.sively inimical if he stared long enough. Twenty minutes since Hank vanished inside. Twenty minutes was an eon. He squared his jaw and fished out his own flashlight. ”Oh, b.l.o.o.d.y blazes. I've got to go in after him, don't I?” Ghostly Mich.e.l.le said, Is that rhetorical? By the way, the servitors are coming.

At the threshold of the prehistoric tomb, the powerful stink of mold and rotting vegetation obliged him to pinch his nostrils while brandis.h.i.+ng the flashlight at arm's length. Only vines and spongy moss, and not a rank carca.s.s in a pool of maggot-clabbered blood that his morbid imagination conjured on the spot. He called, ”Hank! Hey, kid, where the blazes are you?”

The interior shouldn't have encompa.s.sed more than fifteen to twenty feet as the ma.s.sive slabs were of such a dimension as to leave a mere pocket within their confines relative to the dolmen's overall size. Also, despite gaps being covered by brush and vines, sunlight should've seeped through and provided at least dim illumination. Yet his flashlight beam revealed a floor covered in dirt and creepers and the suggestion of a rude column decorated with more carvings, and penetrated no farther into the black. The relic's spatial incongruity summoned Don's dizziness and he fought to maintain composure.

His phone rang. Retreating to fumble the cell from his pocket, Don tripped and sprawled in the leaves. He managed to connect before it went to the recording.

Kurt said from a gulf, ”Dad? Dad? You okay?”

”Yes, right as rain,” Don said, trying to ignore the hundred firecrackers popping in his right knee and ankle, the sc.r.a.pe on his palm where he'd skinned it across the ground, the bruise to his dignity. ”Where are you two?”

The line hissed and snapped and howling overlaid this interference. Kurt was shouting, though his words were faint. ”Dad, get back to camp. Wait-f.u.c.k camp. Point toward the house and get moving. We'll meet you there. Dad, you hear me?”

”Son, I hear you. Problem is, young master Hank went exploring and I've lost him-”

”Dad, forget Hank! Get your a.s.s moving! I repeat, forget Hank. Oh, s.h.i.+t!” The call dropped to static, then silence.

Don awkwardly regained his feet, and the firecrackers became dynamite and he yelped. He spent a few moments listening to the forest, listening for either Hank in the tomb or the other men somewhere in the omnipresent mist. Night was on the wing; already the pale sky had dimmed to red.

A moan or a cackle emanated from the dolmen and Don, with the mola.s.ses speed of a man in a nightmare, turned toward the black slot of an entrance. ”Hank?”

He was running, cras.h.i.+ng through brush and smas.h.i.+ng into trees, rebounding from them and charging onward, heedless of injury, intent solely upon flight in a straight line. His breath exploded in sobs of exhaustion and he couldn't recall what spurred him, except that his fear had escalated to mindless terror, the terror of an animal fleeing before a cyclone of fire. He was away from the dolmen, and that was good, very good, and every stride took him farther into the trackless forest, which wasn't so good, but better than the alternative, better than being caught. He mustn't be caught. Mustn't be caught.

Run, baby; they're coming! Mich.e.l.le said, floating over his shoulder.

A branch slashed his cheek and ripped his gla.s.ses free. He ran and then it was too dark for running and he collapsed, curled tight, knuckles in mouth, retching and gasping.

Later, Don dragged himself under the sheltering boughs of a grand-daddy fir tree and rested with his cheek pressed to a bed of fir needles. His pack was gone, his clothes in shreds, he'd lost the phone, and his knee was swollen as a cantaloupe. As he calmed and adrenaline trickled away, pain filled the gap; pain sufficient to cause him to rip strips from his pants and fas.h.i.+on an impromptu gag to bite upon. Despite the void whirling in his brain where a record of his last few minutes at the dolmen belonged, it seemed vitally important that he meld with the environment, that he become an un.o.btrusive creature of the wood. He jammed the fabric into his mouth and clamped tight, and gibbered involuntarily while leaves whispered and water dripped and an owl hooted softly overhead.

Don swatted at the hungry mosquitoes and tried to concentrate. The dark was so complete he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. Bit by bit fragments fit together like puzzle pieces and he remembered staring into gloom of the dolmen as he now stared into the nothingness of the night forest. He remembered a low, throaty moan drifting from the tomb. He'd seen abrupt movement, a shadow within shadow, rapidly approaching and retreating simultaneously. A moist, pallid figure; tall, yet hunched, all angles and fluid in its motion. A faceless apparition, its head clouded in shadow.

The proportions were wrong for Hank. If not Hank, then who? It all distorted and zipped away from Don and the rest was a complete blank; the sequence only picked up again with his flight and fall.

All of this seemed familiar, somehow. The abject terror, the impossible dolmen, a missing companion, the experience of frailty and abandonment in the maw of the wild. He was reliving a nightmare that taunted him with its opacity.

You've been here before. Here, or somewhere very close. You've seen that... person. Oh, a person, was it? He didn't need his muse Mich.e.l.le to laugh him off the stage. Shade Mich.e.l.le put a finger to her lips and shook her head, then evaporated.

A fox screamed. The mist filled his bower and wormed into his nose and mouth, and he shook with violent chills. There was a terrifying moment when he jolted from a doze to the crackling of leaves and something heavy slammed into him-a beast with heaving wet fur and raw, heated breath, and Don cried out. Thule whimpered and buried his blocky muzzle under Don's arm.

”Oh, doggie,” he said and hugged his trembling pet and together they cowered in the primeval darkness. A breeze came creaking and squeaking through the forest. Don imagined many doors opening in the trunks of cedars and firs.

Darker, and darker.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Mystery Mountain Stomp (1980).

Monday morning after he and Mich.e.l.le straggled home from the funeral reception for Louis Plimpton, Don went into the Olympia office of AstraCorp where work deluged him. His supervisor and company comptroller Wayne Kykendahl fumed and boiled like old angry Vesuvius; his florid jowls quivered wrathfully. Something was amiss. n.o.body dared ask and Don was too exhausted to care.

He pa.s.sed through the day in a kind of stupor, doing his best to forget the hideously strange weekend at the Wolverton estate, the bizarre interrogation by the weirdoes claiming to be federal agents, the equally unsettling conversation with the Rourke boy, the monstrous museum display...

Then, a few moments before he managed to slink home, a flat package arrived via courier, no return address. He initially a.s.sumed the package contained a bundle of requested materials from one of his ongoing projects and didn't get around to cracking the seal until after dinner. Mich.e.l.le was locked in her study, ranting and raving over the d.a.m.nable family history she was a.s.sembling, so he camped in the parlor and went through the briefcase load of paperwork he'd lugged from the office.

What he discovered in the anonymous package proved incomprehensible at first, but after a second read through his neck p.r.i.c.kled and he was reminded of the horror he'd felt gazing upon the Cro-Magnon skin hanging on display.

He poured himself a gla.s.s of bourbon. And another. Sleep was fitful, his dreams macabre and disjointed.

At the office the next morning Don slumped over his desk. He clutched his skull, vowing to never touch another drop of hard liquor if he lived a hundred years, all the while suffering sporadic catcalls of the boys as they poked their gleeful mugs into his broom closet of an office.

Around eleven o'clock, he asked Ronnie ”Cub” Houghton from R&D to walk him the several tree-lined blocks to the Flintlock Hotel. The hotel bas.e.m.e.nt const.i.tuted a substantial commercial annex, including a cla.s.sy barbershop, shoes.h.i.+ne station, cigar emporium, an international newsstand called The Carrier, and The Happy Tiger Lounge, home of the ten-dollar martini-a hidden lair of legislators and the slick lobbyists who followed them in shoals. The Happy Tiger was Ronnie's preferred lunch hour haunt-he endeavored to snag a booth with an opportune view of the gaggles of secretaries and paralegals and interns perched on leather stools flanking the silky-bright granite bar. Don's head hurt too much for him to appreciate the cavalcade of high heels, short skirts and hosiery. Clouds of hairspray and perfume made his eyes water. He sneezed into his hanky. Mich.e.l.le had stopped wearing scents out of a tender and rare inclination toward mercy.

No martinis for Don. The day-s.h.i.+ft bartender, a hulking bruiser named Vern, took one look at his pale, sweaty face and mixed tomatoes, lime and ice in a shaker and had the waitress deliver it to his booth with a complimentary plate of gourmet crackers. Ronnie threw back his s.h.a.ggy head and laughed good-naturedly at Don's misery; he ordered an import beer and a Caesar salad (G.o.d knew why he bothered, the boys nicknamed him Cub on account of his behemoth pear-shaped torso and copious patches of wiry black hair that grew wild and the fact he packed enough lard to hibernate) and plunged into an earnest monologue regarding the latest remote sensing device, a prototype model designed by some firm in Norway, and he was practically salivating about the possibilities. Don nodded and smiled noncommittally and thought about the government men, the spooks, who'd braced him at the reception.

What was it with all this recent weirdness? Montoya (and why was that name so familiar?), Cooye, Bronson Ford, and Louis? Poor Louis. So much for the story about a coronary conclusion, although one wit said long ago that the ultimate cause of all death was heart failure. He sipped his hangover antidote and tried not to worry where it was leading, or how Mich.e.l.le might be involved. Grandpa, that secretive coot, had loved her dearly. Don paused now to speculate whether it was the out-to-pasture spymaster in him that responded to her so well.

What if Frick and Frack were right? Everybody knows Sinatra worked for the CIA on his road shows. Mich.e.l.le travels to a lot of dicey places on her little special visa. It's the perfect cover for an operative. G.o.dd.a.m.n those guys for putting such moronic suspicions in his head.