“Yeah, it is,” Meshack agreed. “But we’ve got to look.”
“We should look for signs of other men,” I said. “If someone came to deliver a will or a deed, then he must’ve left tracks. Perhaps he left markings for us to follow.”
“What kind of markings?” Carlson asked, but he sounded interested and not dismissive.
I shrugged and turned my shoulder to adjust the strap on my pack. “Chalk marks. Candle stubs. Letters or arrows written on the ceiling with smoke. Anything at all that says we’re not the first to pass this way.”
Titus added, “There might even be some sign left that Boone came here. Might find another mark of his, or something he might’ve dropped. There’s no telling.”
And with that added incentive, the men began to disperse.
We didn’t stray far from one another, not more than a few yards. No one wanted to leave the sight of the group, and no one in the group wanted any one else to sneak away. It was a self-regulating system that kept us close.
***
We found it difficult to take our eyes off the floor in front of us, for it was terrifically uneven and difficult to navigate if we weren’t paying the strictest attention. But we watched the ceiling and the walls, too, and at one point Nicodemus held up his lantern and said, “Look. Is that ours?”
On the ceiling, at a bare spot that was smoother than the rest of its surroundings, someone had smoked a straight line with a pointed end.
“It’s an arrow,” he added.
“It certainly looks like it,” I nodded. “And since it indicates the direction we suspect to be deepest, we might assume that it’s a message. People who explore caves mark their passage this way. Or it might have been left by whoever Heaster paid to deposit his will.”
Meshack frowned. “I don’t like it. I don’t think Heaster would’ve left us any hints. He wasn’t that kind.”
No one argued, but Titus said, “Heaster wouldn’t, sure. But I bet you a dollar he didn’t come in here himself. Whoever he sent might’ve felt the need to be helpful. Or it might be the mark of somebody from years and years ago. Has anyone found any other way past this first split-up room?”
But we hadn’t seen anything to indicate another passage.
“Then that’s the way we have to go,” Meshack said. He didn’t sound happy about it.
***
There, again. At the edge of my vision, there he was.
A quivering shadow with light around the edges, there in the darkness. He was a silhouette with a face. And he was gone.
Then he stood in front of me, holding a candle.
No one else made any remark about him. The rest of the men were steeling themselves against the inevitable chore that would take us deeper and—unless we were mistaken—into the way where the atrocious stench was even greater. We were tracking it down, and we were creeping in closer to its source.
The ghost’s candle was battered, a cut stump from a home-dipped wick. Its yellowish wax dribbled over his knuckles. His face was illuminated perfectly, almost brilliantly.
How was it that no one else could see him?
He was looking at me. Into the lines of his face was carved a hard determination. He was urging me on, urging us on. Whether or not he was the man who first smoked the pointing signal, he wished for us to follow it.
His mouth moved, and I heard a whisper that fluttered with disapproval, or unwillingness, or displeasure. I couldn’t tell what.
You’re not prepared, but you’ve got to try.
“Uncle John?”
I jumped. “Yes?”
Meshack was cloaked in darkness; his face was perfectly black because the bulk of the light was behind him and his own lantern was held in the direction of the passageway.
“What’re you looking at?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly, and it was true. The ghost was gone.
“You look awful,” he said. He was trying to be quiet.
“I feel all right,” I lied.
“Is something wrong?”
I wanted to tell him, but the room was too close and I would be overheard. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m not accustomed to this, that’s all. This close space, this darkness. It’s unfamiliar. I’ll adjust,” I assured him.
He stared at me for a few seconds, probably guessing more than I’d told him, and then he said, “All right. Well, come on, then.”
As we pushed ourselves forward in a small, disgruntled pack, the outside twilight of the cave entrance behind us was perfectly and briefly snuffed.
Then it blinked back into place.
I whirled around, and since I was following the rest of the men I had the best view of the white-gray portal. And the slit remained unbroken, if inadequate to give us any real illumination.
It was as if it were a window, and something had swiftly walked past.
I shoved my lantern forward, holding it out and wielding it like a weapon.
I saw nothing except for the empty cavern with its stone finger columns and posts, and its oozing, shining walls. But for an instant the smell was stronger. It blew past me in a gust that made my throat seize—and I couldn’t stifle a tiny retch.
“Uncle John,” Meshack said, and this time it wasn’t a question. He could smell it too, so it wasn’t a matter of my imagination or spirit intervention. Meshack had turned around, and placed his arm on my shoulder. “Come on, now. You don’t want to get left behind in here.”
In fact, I most certainly did not wish to be left behind. On the other hand, I did not wish to proceed even one inch deeper into the cave.
But I’d made my choice. I’d come this far. And I’d go as far as it was necessary to see this thing out.
I took another look around and saw no ghosts, nor any explanation for the stench. I followed after my nephew, whose hunched shoulders were stooping to pass beneath a low-hanging arch. The arch was a great marvel of nature; it was elaborately fanged with stalactites, the longest of which would have tapped against my elbow if I had not dodged it.
As I passed it, I reached out a hand and touched the thing. It was cold and slick. Even though I knew that only water coated it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d pressed my hand against something more gruesome.
I wiped my fingers against my pants.
***
Up front, Carlson held out an arm and said, “Wait a second. I think I found something.”
It was too much to hope that he’d found the will, lying out and ready for us.
“What is it?” Jacob asked. He shoved his way forward and followed Carlson’s light. “I don’t see anything.”
“That don’t look like a handprint to you?”
“Where?” Jacob still wasn’t seeing it.
Nicodemus came up with his light too, and yes, there it was—very faint. “I get it. Yeah, it sure looks like a handprint, made in mud or something.”
“Mud,” Meshack repeated, and an echo said it for him, a third time. “That don’t look like mud to me,” he said. He brought his face in close, then jerked back as if he’d been bitten. “I’ve never in all my life smelled mud like that. It smells like shit.”
“Sure enough it smells like shit,” Carlson affirmed, but I think he only meant the vernacular sense.
“No, I mean it smells like shit. Like a chicken coop on a hot day, except worse.”
And while they hashed out the finer points of the terrible-smelling mud, a different noise reached my ears—bouncing from some wet wall or past another stone curtain. I heard it plain as day, and it was a clicking, sliding noise.
“Stop it!” I yelped, too fast and too loud to do anything but startle them into silence. When they were all quiet and looking at me, I said, “Don’t you hear that? Listen.”
“Hush up, you old lunatic,” Nicodemus spit at the nearest column.
Carlson joined in. “It’s not enough, you seeing things what ain’t there. Now you’re hearing things, too?”
I couldn’t decide if I should be vin
dicated or terrified when the noise came again.
Slip, slip, scrape.
“There, you all heard—“
Meshack cut me off with a wave of his hand and a hasty shhh. Yes, he heard it. They all heard it.
“What the hell is that?” Carlson asked, but he had the good sense to drop his voice to barely more than a baby’s sigh.
Shhh, Meshack insisted again, and Titus chimed in with a simi- lar noise.
After ten or fifteen seconds of turning all our ears to the sound, Titus held his lantern up towards his face and mouthed, Something heavy.
Meshack agreed. Coming closer, he mouthed back.
I could barely see them trying to talk without making a sound, but every word they conveyed was a sharp pick in my stomach. Something heavy. Coming closer. If we held ourselves still and paid the utmost attention, we could hear it and yes, coming closer.
I didn’t want to close my eyes; I didn’t dare close them, despite the frightened and childish impulse that seized me.
Instead I concentrated and tried to imagine the shape and size of the thing that made the noise. The scrapes that accompanied the dragging noise had a rhythmic quality to them. It could’ve been footsteps, but they were too irregular—unless the creature walking was partly lame.
A glance around at the party told me the others were doing the same, trying to sort out what might make such an odd, intimidat- ing noise.
“It might be nothing,” Jacob said. His whisper was a shout in the watercolor blackness of the cave.
I wished to heaven that I could see the cave’s entrance again, merely to know it was there and be reassured that there was an exit from this suffocating place with its seamless walls. But we were well past that, and no matter how hard I strained to see behind us, I saw nothing of the gray-white portal.
“What kind of nothing?” Nicodemus asked, and all the letters shook like they were being rattled in a box.
Someone was breathing hard and loud. The gasps took on a sharper, wheezing edge. I held my lantern up and towards the face of Carlson, who was squeezing his free hand along his ribcage. Carlson?” I asked.
He waved as if to respond, but he couldn’t answer.
By pure stubbornness he pulled himself together, despite the rising clamor of the heavy, dragging, closely approaching visitor—and make no mistake, we all believed that it was alive.
The thing that came our way was doing so with purpose. It was stalking forward, coming up from some distant hole or chamber; and with it, the stink came too, advancing ahead of it and warning, or promising, something terrible.
“We can’t just sit here,” Meshack said. He was shaking and tense. His arms were tight around the lantern he held, and I only then realized he’d retrieved one of those rock-picking axes. It perched firmly in his fist, held slightly aloft.
Titus was mirroring Meshack’s stance, except that he had his revolver up instead of an axe. “Where do we go?”
“This is crazy!” Carlson finally squeaked. “It’s just a noise. It’s just a damn noise, and it can’t hurt us or nothing. Whatever it is,” he was barreling forward with his thoughts as if should he stop, he would not be able to begin again. “It’s more afraid of us than we are of it, right? Isn’t that what we tell the young’uns when—”
“Then why’s it coming for us, if it’s so scared?” Nicodemus snapped.
Carlson ignored Nicodemus and said to Titus, “Put down your goddamned gun, Mander.”
“I’m not aiming it at you.”
“I don’t want to see it out no-how.”
And with a ferocious click that had all the bang of a barking dog, Carlson had his own piece cocked.
“Not again!” I said in my full voice, and though I’m usually described as soft-spoken, I might have been screaming. I held out my arms and spoke above the one-two, one-two, slippery slide of the thing coming up close. “Not now, not here!”
Meshack tried to shove me aside, but I held my ground. “No,” I swore. “Any one of you fires in this space, we’ll all get killed, on’t you understand? The bullets will bounce, they’ll bounce and hit—”
***
I was interrupted by a call.
***
I’m at a loss to describe this call, except to say that it came at such a volume that I was reminded of standing on a riverboat a bit too close to the whistle. Although we felt no gust of wind to accompany it, the belching, grumbling croak breezed through our hair and rattled our clothes.
We were startled into perfect immobility, each one of us from youngest to oldest.
Carlson particularly looked pale, and his hand was over his heart—squeezing at the ribs and meat there.
And then, very quickly—so quickly that I must say it happened all at once—a slick orange shadow blinked behind Titus, and his lantern was extinguished in a swift, thunderous lurch.
Carlson screamed, and Nicodemus fired off one mad bullet that ricocheted with a series of stone-shearing pings and scrapes. Jacob was screaming too, but I couldn’t tell why; and no one could see Titus. No one knew what had become of him.
He was there, and then a shadow that moved fast and thickly had covered him like a quilt, and then he was gone.
It had happened in less than a moment.
My body moved of its own accord, and I had no control over it at all. I flung myself backward, seeking some solid place of refuge or at least a spot from which I could defend myself from our unknown attacker. But it was not stone that I found, not at first. My backbone collided with something softer—though equally sturdy.
For a panic-stricken second I imagined a boulder covered with an eiderdown quilt.
The lantern in my hand burst backwards and I heard a tinkling crack as some part of it shattered against the cave wall.
Oil splashed, and a stray spark cast the overflow into a furious blast of spilling flame.
The whole room lit up into a collage of yellow, and copper, and black. Choppy silhouettes of frantic shapes cut across the light and although we had illumination to spare, it was impossible to see. It was impossible to think. It was impossible to do anything except grit my teeth and try to cover my head, because another piercing cry blasted out right in our midst, and the sound was purely astounding.
I turned my head and tried to examine the source but I saw nothing except a shapeless, lurching, wretched beast in a feather cloak—or that was the impression that reached my brain, at least. I couldn’t imagine what else it could be; it was as if my memory was flipping through images in a picture book, desperate and grasping for something logical.
An Indian chief in an eagle headdress, turning and dancing around a fire.
A phoenix, engorged and rising.
It was on fire, and I wasn’t sure why until I remembered the oil in my lantern. My hand was on fire too, and I hadn’t noticed until the searing pain cut through my terror and confusion. I screamed and the flaming bird-beast screamed back.
A pair of wings, each the size of a carriage door, extended with such power that they might have been propelled by pistons or springs—and the nameless thing launched itself forward.
“Run!” I think it was Meshack’s voice. “Run!” he said again, and then there was another round of gunfire but I do not know who began it and by then my ears were ringing so soundly that all I could hear was a whispering chime.
Bullets zipped around my head; one chinked against the stone wall beside me and tore at my sleeve, rending a perfect slice that—had it come any closer—would have drawn a fair amount of blood.
I was stunned. I was too stunned to move, though the men were moving around me. Someone was shouting for Titus, but I didn’t see him. Someone was shouting for Pa, so that must’ve been Nicodemus; and someone shouted back, so that would have been Jacob.
Meshack grabbed my arm, and it stung because the bullet had clipped me close.
He propelled me forward, and he pushed me, shoved me, then pulled me onward—deeper into the cave—and I couldn’t under
stand why. I even asked him, “Why?” and it came out like a pathetic shout. I hated the sound of my own voice, but I couldn’t make it any stronger and I was increasingly certain that I had soiled myself with fright.
A hysterical thought of comfort alighted in my head.
At least no one will smell it.
Meshack wasn’t answering me. He let my question linger in the air and as he drew me deeper into the darkness, I knew why. Behind us—behind me, for I was the last to follow—the awful flaming beast was blocking our only retreat to the open air.
XIII
More than She Could Chew: Reflections from the Road, Daniel Boone, 1775
She knew where I was hiding, and we both knew it.
Little Heaster was gone, and his light was gone with him—so I was pretty sure she had the advantage over me. I could see it in her eyes when the moonlight caught them. They lit up, reflecting back at me in a pair of green-gold circles. Animals with eyes like that, they see real good when the light’s low, because that’s how God made them.
Unfortunate for me, I was not made in any such a fashion.
I couldn’t see a thing, hardly, and what I could see I couldn’t see with any real distinction. The whole world was one black shadow at the bottom of a bucket, at the bottom of a well.
I was breathing hard, but trying to slow it. I had to get hold of myself. I had to think.
I wanted to believe that my thinking could give me an advantage—a man can outthink a beast, and a man can make himself hold a branch on fire, even when he don’t want to. But my fire was out, and I knew enough about the thing before me to know that she could think, too. She could trick. She could lie.
And she could see better than I could. Maybe she could hear better too.
But I listened for all I was worth.
I closed my eyes, since they weren’t doing me any good anyway, and I opened my ears as best I could. At the edge of what I could hear, Heaster was getting away. Much closer, the creature was holding real still.
Only the hard crack of a splitting twig or the barest rustle of a too-close patch of leaves betrayed her.
At least I knew she hadn’t followed him. At least she’d decided to stay and try to get a bite out of me. I was glad for that, even as I was shaking in my boots. Between me and Little Heaster, she’d have a harder time taking me.