Day 27

Chapter 43

[Problems in the recent chapters: No gun for Bonanza, corpse isn’t faceless. That’s nice and dramatic, but it really isn’t part of the story]
By the time Bonanza, Olaf, and Hugo arrived at Skeleton Cave, darkness had fallen in full. The clouds had thickened and a light snow still fell. In the parking area, they found no vehicles. Hugo got out and turned on a flashlight. He looked for tire tracks and found theirs from the previous night, and one other set, but he could not tell how old they might be, only that they were made on this day.
He looked at Bonanza, who looked up the trail. They walked out the trail toward the sinkholes for Skeleton Cave.
At the first sinkhole, they shined their lights into the pit. Nothing could be seen but the bare rocks whitened by a skiff of snow. A few trees grew there and a scattering of bushes, but nothing unusual. The second pit looked the same. Hugo started to walk around the edge of the pit toward the entry trail when he heard a scream. It came from far away; he couldn’t be sure from which way. Wildly, he looked around. Up the hill, toward Torture Rock he saw a flash of light.
He ran back around the sinkhole and pointed up the hill. “Someone’s up there.” He said. He started off cross country making his way through the boulders and round trees and sagebrush as best as he could. He slowed trying to remember if there were any sinkholes in the area. He remembered none from his previous travels in the area, but it had been a long time since he had been here in the daylight.
Bonanza and Olaf ran back to the truck as Hugo ran up the hill. He heard the engine gun, then the tires throw gravel as it sped off. Three miles by road, less than half a mile by foot, Hugo thought. Who will get there first?
Almost immediately, he felt winded. His exhaustion from being in the cave for most of the day returned. He regretted having to work so hard and now have to run up this hill. His mind tried to tell him that only some kids were playing a twisted game up at the rock, but his instincts told him to keep on, because it could be, would be Mandy.
His breathing became labored as sweat poured off his forehead into his eyes. He wiped at it madly, but to no avail. He thought about using the light sparingly so that he would have some kind of surprise advantage when he arrived, but the darkness so swallowed up the landscape that he feared running into a tree, or worse a hole, large or small: with the light off, he could see nothing. When he tried, it felt like being in the depths of a cave, no light.
The hill steepened and he slowed to a walk. He could hear soft chanting up at the top, and a steady faint glow came over the side.
From his right flashed a figure, a shape. He looked but couldn’t see anything. He shined his light in the direction in which he thought it had been, but only saw junipers and sagebrush. He though he heard something behind him. It is only my imagination playing trick, he thought. I have to get up this hill. Just then, he stumbled onto the trail that connects Torture Rock and Skeleton Cave. He picked up speed again confident of not running into anything.
He heard a scrabbling behind him and then the beast flashed to his left and knocked him down. A sickening odor of death and decay filled the air, gagging him as he hit the ground. He flashed his light be could see no sign of it. He heard a step to his left, again and raised the club just as the beast jumped toward him. It cave out a cry of terror and tumbled to its side, scrambling to get away from the object. Hugo stood, pointing the flashlight this way and that, trying to find the attacker. It had gone.
He knew that whoever was on top of the hill, must know that he had arrived because of the noise. The slope became more gradual. He rounded a slight bend and saw through the trees a horrible scene. Two people dressed in masks with long, pointed snouts, and grotesque protuberant eyes chanted softly beside and around Torture Rock. A still figure lay on the rock, tied somehow, and unmoving. Hugo turned off his light and began to run toward the rock. When he passed the last tree, he heard his name. He turned. Kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind her back sat Mandy. She looked at him pleadingly, and then at the rock.
“They have Mrs. McGregor.”
Hugo’s mind swam. What is Mrs. McGregor doing here? He thought. He looked from the rock to Mandy. “Are you all right?” He asked.
She nodded. He felt in his pockets for a knife to cut the ropes around her wrists. He found nothing. A key, anything to undo the knots! He thought. He dropped to his knees behind her and started to work at the knots with his bare hands. The stayed tied as tight as ever. “I can’t get them undone,” he said.
“You have to stop them,” said Mandy.
Hugo looked to Mrs. McGregor and the two figures chanting. He knew that she must be right but felt reluctant to leave here. “Go,” she said.
Hugo jumped to his feet, brandishing the flashlight with his right hand and the club with the other. He walked, then ran at the pair. Before he reached them, he heard the beast approaching from behind. He turned and held up the club. He made the symbol of the upright stick with the feather by its side in the air. The creature stopped, as though an invisible barrier had been erected between them.
Hugo looked at the beast in horror. He noticed the teeth. He noticed the size. He noticed the muscle and the sheer killing strength, but he couldn’t tear his mind from the eyes. I am looking into Hell, he thought. Blackness swallowing utter blackness into infinity. He felt that he should lay down and surrender his body to the evil that would overcome and kill him.
As he held the club aloft, however, he resisted. He felt a power flow down his arm and strengthen his resolve. He chanced a glance behind himself as the two chanters. They stood and stared at Hugo and the creature. He could feel their terror: it felt like tendrils of visceral madness encircling his body, reaching for the creature. The creature prowled in front of him pacing, looking for a way in.
“Get away from her,” he heard himself say.
“You will not stop us,” said a man’s voice.
Hugo turned to face them and the beast found the weakness. It leapt, but Hugo anticipated. As the creature rolled to its side to avoid the club, Hugo stood his ground. Instead of retreating, however, the creature used its momentum to make its way to the rock. It leapt onto the rock, digging its claws into the person on it, into Mrs. McGregor. Hugo heard a groan. The creature leapt once again and pounced on the farthest of the people in masks. A woman’s scream of terror and pain rent the air. Hugo felt his hair raise on end as the creature tore at her.
Hugo ran at the other dancer, jumping on him, striking with the flashlight. He fell limp under Hugo’s blows. Hugo brandished the club once again and forced the creature away. It looked at Hugo, the bloody muzzle twisted into a sort of grin, then bounded off into the night.


Chapter 44

Hugo cautiously made his way to Mrs. McGregor, tied to the rock. He feared the worst. Blood ran off the sides of the rock and pooled on the ground below. She had been clothed in a black robe, her hair pulled back tight against her neck. Ropes held her hands out to the sides, anchored to rocks a few feet away. He reached out and felt her wrist: he felt a pulse and had hope.
“Mrs. McGregor,” he said. “Esmeralda.”
She opened an eye. Her breathing came in faint gasps. “Hugo,” she said. She smiled just a little. “Hugo,” she said again. She opened her eyes wide. “Hugo,” she almost shouted. “You are the key.”
He looked at her as she fell silent again. Her eyes closed again. “Mrs. McGregor!” he shouted, shaking her shoulder. “Mrs. McGregor!” he shouted again. He could hear the growl of the pick-up coming up the road, but ignored it.
Her eyes snapped open again, “You are the key, Hugo. You told these [heretic/blasphemers] how to awaken the creature in your book, don’t you see?” She raised her head as to get up, but fell back when she felt the restraints on her. “You are the key, Hugo.” Her eyes snapped shut again.
Hugo thought for a moment. But what good does that do us now, he thought. “Mrs. McGregor,” he said again. “What do you mean, I am the key?”
She lay with her head on the rock, eyes closed. She whispered: “By your knowledge was the creature released, and so too, by your knowledge, shall the creature be returned to the ground.”
He heard footsteps behind him. He jumped up brandishing the club. Dr. Bonanza put up his hands. “It’s us, Hugo,” he said. He walked up and looked at Mrs. McGregor. He knelt and began to cut the bonds. Olaf tended to her wounds.
“She said that I am the key,” said Hugo.
Dr. Bonanza knelt, working for a moment. “And so you are,” he said. “I refused to believe it, but she insisted that you come with me while I investigated. She was right, Hugo. You are the key.”
Hugo remembered Mandy and went toward her. “Only you, Hugo, can put away this terror from McLoughlin Valley once and for all.”
As he walked to Mandy, he thought about all that had happened, and what he might have said in his book, that would give such an opening…what possible instructions. He remembered a legend, recounted in Haiti, that told of a snake charmer who had turned to necromancy:
…with the blood of the one and the power of a death, he made the creature whole and brought it back to life, wrenching it from the bowls of the earth and releasing its terror on the land. With the sign of he broken tree broken, it walked with impunity…

My god, he thought. Would someone try to do that here? He shook his head. They had done it. They must have combined it with some other ritual, because this creature was of flesh and blood, and not dead. But how? How can I be the key?


Chapter 45

[To be continued in one week. I promise! I am at 50,140 words and am going to finish up after the Christmas Bazaar so that I can concentrate on wood projects. I may write during the day and if I do, I will post that as well.]