Day 12

Chapter 18

Hugo thought about bringing up the stranger’s tracks, but decided that it had just been a coincidence. Other people come up here all the time, he thought. Then he turned around in his seat as they pulled back onto the road and headed toward Torture Rock. The trailhead was deserted. No other cars were parked there, nor had they been, at least Hugo hadn’t seen any other tracks.
“Did you see another person, Dr. Bonanza?” He asked.
“Where? Here? On the trail?” Bonanza replied. “Sure I saw someone, it must have been Mrs. McGregor. She must have disappeared from your house and reappeared up here. She said that she needed to get out into the fresh air.” Bonanza slapped his knee as they bounced along the road.
‘I take it by your sarcasm that you didn’t see anyone.”
“Hugo saw some tracks that overlapped yours. He thinks that a man happened to walk by when we were both off the trail.”
Bonanza thought for a second. “I don’t recon that I saw anyone but you two when you came back after your run up the hill.”
Hugo thought, I suppose that he could have walked all the way out here, but it is a long way for any other trails or parking areas. Hugo let it drop when the other two seemed to lose interest.
“Why don’t we have some lunch when we stop?” Mandy said. “I brought us all some sandwiches.”
“That sounds good,” said Hugo, his mind still on the phantom hiker.
From the trailhead, the road wound around the base of the ridge, skirting the marshes, most of which were still dry in this section of the refuge. They came to a sign that pointed to the right and said Torture Rock. Bonanza signaled, then turned the truck up the grade. The road ended after about a hundred yards in a small parking area. One picnic table sat under a juniper, and a trashcan had been placed next to the trailhead.
As they got out of the pick-up, Hugo scanned for tire tracks and foot prints. One set if tire tracks led in and had parked about where they had parked. Hugo walked to the trail and looked to see if any footprints led down it. They did, but after about twenty yards, they doubled back and veered over to the picnic table which sat about twenty feet to the north of the trail. Hugo followed them and sat down beside Mandy, and across from Dr. Bonanza who ate a sandwich.
Mandy put her hand on Hugo’s leg and asked, “What did you see?”
He tried not to look down at her hand, feeling foolish once again. “Someone was here since the rain. They walked down the trail, but not too far, and then came back to here.” He looked under the table to see if he could find any remnants. He shook his head as he came back up and said: “I’m getting too paranoid.” Mandy passed him a sandwich.
Jut then, a raven called from a perch just above them. All three jumped at how loud and how close the bird had been.
“Jesus,” exclaimed Bonanza.
Hugo looked up. He could see the bird at the top of the juniper looking down at him. “The bird is staring at us,” he said.
Bonanza and Mandy both looked up, but the bird flew away. It circled left as though it planned to land on an adjacent tree, then called again and flew off to the southeast.
Off toward Skeleton Cave, Hugo thought. “Maybe we should follow that raven,” he said out loud.
Dr. Bonanza scoffed. “I’m eatin’ lunch. I ain’t chasin’ after no damn bird.” He eyed Hugo as though he would pounce upon him if the suggestion came up again.
Hugo looked off to the south. He couldn’t see very far. The bushes grew tall and close together, and the ground rose for about forty yards before descending to Skeleton cave. The bird quickly disappeared from sight, flying as with a purpose. As the raven passed, other birds began to chatter in the brush. Hugo recognized bushtits, and juncos, but a third kind of bird flitted about that he hadn’t seen before.
He stood up and walked slowly toward the bushes, shielding his eyes from the sun to have a better look.
As he neared, though he crept as quietly as he could, the birds erupted in a frenzied flock of startled animation. All he could see of the third kind of bird was white on its back. He couldn’t even tell what kind of bird it had been. Then, as he turned back to the table, he almost stepped on a lizard. It looked like a horned toad. I didn’t think that there were any horned toads in the refuge, he thought. He shrugged and walked back to the table. He remembered how horned toads could squirt blood from their eyes when threatened. That really is disgusting, he thought.
They finished up lunch, then walked up to Torture Rock. The rock itself looked a lot like all the other rocks in the area, but, as Hugo had learned on a fourth grade field trip (Mrs. Meyer’s class), it had a grisly legend. Their guide had been a Native American. The local Indians, he had said, believed that before they came to inhabit the area, another people lived there. They sacrificed humans, those that they had captured from neighboring tribes and even people from their own tribe (as if somehow that should be worse). One of his classmates had said they had dug up the dirt around the base of the rock and had found blood four feet down.
Hugo hadn’t believed it, not really, but it was a pretty creepy story.
More recently, in the late 1800s, the Army had camped here when they were trying to roust a renegade band of Indians who had allegedly killed some farm animals that had belonged to the local settlers. As they reached the rock, the walk is only about two hundred feet, there stood a plaque commemorating the event. Nothing about the human sacrifices.
“Nothing here,” grunted Dr. Bonanza. He walked around the rock, then looked back toward the ridge.
Hugo looked more closely. He could imagine the human sacrifices laying here, not very comfortably, he thought. The rock sat about two feet high and four and a half feet long by about a foot and a half wide. It generally pointed north and south, but not quite enough to think it strange, not enough tot think that someone had deliberately moved it. He looked at the ground. No one had been here recently, as far as he could tell, but the ground is quite rocky and so he couldn’t be sure. He bent down to look at a dark patch on the west side of the rock.
Mandy bent over his shoulder. He could smell her. “What is it?” She asked.
“I don’t know,” said Hugo. “It might be blood, but I can’t be sure.” His time at the Forensics lab had taught him that lots of things looked like blood, and that blood could look like a lot of other things.
“Here’s something,” Mandy said. She pointed to a small blob of translucent white in the dirt. She picked it up and handed it to Hugo.
“Wax,” he said.
Bonanza came over and took a look as well. “Not many people would come out to Torture Rock after dark,” he said.
Hugo slowly began to circle the rock, spiraling outward as he had done at the kill site of the deer. About thirty feet out, he found what looked like a deer or rabbit trail. He took it for a little ways until he came to a tree. He circled the tree. Just above head height there were the same three marks tat the had seen on the other tree. He jogged down the trail farther and saw what he had expected to see: the entrance to Skeleton Cave about half a mile away.
He jogged back. After catching his breath, he relayed the information about the symbols and the trail to Skeleton Cave.
Both Mandy and Bonanza wanted to see the marks for themselves and insisted that Hugo lead them to the tree before they made their way to the cave.
“This is starting to get a little weird,” Mandy said as she studied the symbols. “I took some Japanese Literature in college and we studied some of the Kanji [and Hirakana?]. This looks similar, but I don’t recognize anything specific. This one,” she pointed to the middle symbol, “almost looks like it could be “man” or “heaven” or some derivative, but I’m not sure.”
All three stared at the symbols for a time, learning nothing.
“I think that we should head down to the cave and see what we can find,” said Hugo at last.
Mandy looked at the sky. It had turned cloudy again. “It’s getting late,” she said. “It’ll be dark soon.”
Hugo looked at Bonanza. “Well, dark is dark in the cave,” he said.
“I didn’t bring a flashlight,” Hugo said.
“I didn’t either,” said Mandy.
“Well, it’s a good thing that I’m the leader of this here expedition. I got one in the truck,” said Bonanza and headed back up the trail toward the rock. Mandy and Hugo followed. Mandy reached out and held Hugo’s hand. He didn’t pulled away. They walked slowly back to the pick-up.
When they arrived, Bonanza had his head behind the seat, rifling through the empty beer cans, hunting for the flashlight. Hugo imagined that it probably would match the bandana that he had used the previous day. While Bonanza searched, Hugo pulled out a beer for himself, first offering one to Mandy.
“Ah ha!” Bonanza exclaimed pulling out a green 12v flashlight that looked to be at least forty years old. The plastic body had cracked on the side, and was melted on one corner. The blackened handle was greasy from years of use.
Hugo looked at him dubiously. Dr. Bonanza pointed it at Hugo’s chest and pushed the button. Nothing happened. Bonanza shook the light, then pounding on it with his other hand. The light flickered on. “Ah ha!” Dr. Bonanza said again.
He looked at the light, then pointed it back toward Hugo. As Hugo watched, the light dimmed, faded, and then went out.
Bonanza looked at the light, banged with his hand again, then threw it back in the pick-up. He reached across the seat and pulled out a beer for himself. “I guess it needs a new battery,” he said.
“What will we do now?” Mandy asked.
“I guess we’ll head home,” replied Hugo.