Cradle Lake (18 page)

“This is Devil's Stone, right?”

“Is that what you're looking for?”

He considered. “I don't know what I'm looking for.”

“Sure,” said the man. “The town is. Devil's Stone, I mean. Named after the stone itself.”

Alan blinked. “What stone?”

“The one at the crest of Packer's Pass. The, uh …” The man looked around the barroom, rubbing his rough chin. After a moment, he pointed through the wall of the joint in the vague direction of northwest. “Up that way. Packer's Pass begins after the school and the train tracks.”

“What is it?”

“A rocky plateau. Part of the foothills. Christ, I haven't been up there since I was a kid.”

A bright little ember sparked to life in Alan's stomach.
Packer's Pass,
he thought.
The Devil's Stone.

Then his heart froze and his blood ran cold. Bill Hammerstun and Jimmy Carmichael sat at the other end of the bar, pints of beer in their hands. They were staring straight at Alan though he couldn't make out their eyes, darkened under the shadows of their heavy, sloping brows. Alan jerked his arm and nearly spilled his beer.

“Hey,” said the old Indian beside him. “You okay, buddy?”

As he watched, he could see a rivulet of black blood seep out of the gunshot wound in his father's temple. It dribbled down the side of his pasty face and dripped into his beer, staining the foamy head a dark crimson.

A tremor quaked through Alan's body.

“Hey, pal.” The Indian placed a hand on Alan's shoulder. “You look like pea soup.”

Alan laughed nervously. He was flushed and could feel the sweat trickling down his ribs. When he looked back at the opposite end of the bar, the two men were still there, but they were no longer Bill Hammerstun and Jimmy Carmichael. Just two dark-skinned men in hats, their faces turned down toward
their beers. The foamy beer head was no longer crimson.

Holy fuck, am I losing my mind now?

“Yeah, I'm okay.” He managed a chuckle and forced himself to appear calm. “I just thought I saw my dead father sitting over there. Scared the piss out of me for a second.”

The man grinned, exposing teeth that looked like baked beans. “Aw, hell. I see my dead father all the time. Come on, partner. Let me buy you a beer.”

Packer's Pass was a narrow, undisciplined twist of corrugated dirt roadway shrouded by overhanging trees that eased upward along a slight incline through the woods. The trees were healthy and lush, the boles of the slanting oaks silvered by the sun. There were no houses along this route, though Alan spotted rusted, discarded bed frames and the shells of burned-out automobiles through the trees that reminded him of stories about sacred grounds where elephants go to die. Something small and quick darted through the underbrush, a blur of mottled fur.

The old Indian from the bar had informed him that Packer's Pass had gotten its name several years ago after a few campers had gone missing in the nearby woods. A search was conducted, and the only thing the searchers had found was one of the camper's backpacks halfway up the hillside along the dirt road. The pack had been shredded into ribbons, presumably by a mountain lion or bear, the items within strewn indiscriminately around the forest floor. The locals believed the campers were attacked by something much more sinister—something they referred
to as
Adahy,
which, the old Indian explained, translated roughly to “He Who Lives in the Woods.”

None of the campers were ever seen again.

The roadway grew bumpier before it flattened out, opening up onto a small clearing toward the back of which sat a whitewashed shack with a sloping, weather-ruined roof. The windowpanes were blind with muck, and sod grew on the porch planking. Birds nested in the eaves, and ivy climbed the crumbling white bricks of a sagging chimney. A 1958 Chevrolet, colorless and defeated by rust, its chrome bumper and gapped grille pitted to a spotty red brown, sat beside the house. Its busted headlamps were like the empty eye sockets of a skull.

Alan slowed the Toyota to a crawl and rolled down his window. He could smell smoke in the air but could see none. Peering at the house, he was confident it was deserted. He braked and let the car idle, his hands clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel. He was about to turn around and drive back down the dirt road when he noticed what looked like a grave marker—an ovoid slab of granite—protruding from what appeared to be a weedy, overgrown flower bed at the front of the house. Carved into the stone and quite visible even from the car was an upside-down triangle.

His throat felt itchy.

Movement behind one of the grime-covered windows caught his attention. He jerked his head in its direction but could see nothing more. Surely no one still lived here. Surely no one—

The front door opened. A woman in a pastel housedress
and drooping nylons appeared. Her face was a withered mask of deep bloodhound wrinkles. She shuffled toward the edge of the porch with a pained, rheumatic slowness and folded meaty arms over her heavy breasts. Her hair was a silver nest atop her head; cobweb tendrils of loose hair fluttered like pennants in the breeze.

Alan climbed out of the Toyota and raised one hand in a gesture of both affability and complete disclosure. His intentions, he wanted to show her, were of the nonconfrontational variety. “Hi,” he called, taking a few steps through the tall grass. Twigs and dead leaves crunched beneath his sneakers. “I'm sorry. I might be lost …”

The woman produced a slender brown cigarillo from the pocket of her housecoat. She lit it with a match and puffed dirty rings into the air. “You're looking for George,” she said. Her voice was scabrous, grating.

“George? You must have me confused with someone else.” He pointed to the stone with the upside-down triangle on it. “I wanted to ask you about that symbol.”

“You're the college professor,” she said. The tip of her cigarillo flared red. “George has been waiting for you.”

The inside of the house looked no better than the outside. The walls were unpainted slatted panels, and what daylight managed to penetrate the filthy windowpanes took on a fatty, tallow hue. Roots and vines spilled down through rents in the ceiling like jumbles of intestines. The tiny kitchen area—designated as such by the small icebox trailing an extension cord and the laminate countertop overflowing
with soiled dishes—smelled of oils and astringents. On the stove, something burped and boiled in a large pot.

The meaty woman with the bristling silver bun of hair motioned him inside and pulled out a chair for him around a rough-hewn wooden table. Still smoking and without uttering another word, she went directly to the icebox and withdrew a Mason jar of a greenish, soupy viscous liquid while Alan sat down at the table. He heard a television on somewhere in the house, what sounded like an afternoon game show. Leaning back in the chair, the kitchen floorboards creaking beneath his weight, he peered down a shallow hallway cluttered with stacks of newspapers into the room at the end of the hall. A tattered mauve sofa and an Elvis lamp were visible. Animal hides hung from the walls like tapestries.

Alan prodded a groove in the tabletop with his thumbnail. “How do you know who I am? Who's George?”

The words hung in the air as if caught up in the smoke from her cigarillo. She went to a can of Maxwell House and scooped out a spoonful of white powder.

Nails clacked on the linoleum. A sad-looking hound poked its head into the kitchen and surveyed Alan with the reddened, rheumy eyes of an alcoholic.

“How do you know who I am?” he repeated.

This time, the woman glared at him from over one large shoulder. Her eyes were milky and gray, the sclera marbled with blood vessels. Again, she refused to answer.

“That stone marker in the yard,” he said, taking a different approach. “The one that looks like a tombstone. What is it?”

“A barrier and a warning.”

“For what?”

The woman dumped the spoonful of white powder into the Mason jar, then stirred the concoction. The greenish liquid turned cloudy. She brought the mixture across the kitchen and set it on the table.

In the doorway, the hound rested on its front paws, the velvety folds of flesh above its eyes cocking alternately.

“Here,” she said. “Drink this.”

Alan watched the powdered sediment settle at the bottom of the Mason jar. “You're kidding me, right?”

In tattered felt slippers, the woman shuffled back over to the stove. With a large wooden spoon, she stirred the bubbling, pungent contents of the pot.

“Excuse me.” His voice wavered. Looking at the Mason jar of green liquid made him queasy. And despite his morning swim in the lake, he suddenly felt fatigued. Even his ulcer was starting to return; he could feel the magma sunburst roiling in his lower intestine. “Excuse me but I'm not drinking this. Who's George? Is he even here? Ma'am?”

She clacked the wooden spoon against the rim of the pot. A chunky paste the color of flesh dripped from the end of the spoon. Alan tried hard not to imagine what was boiling away in that pot. “George is up in the mountains, where he's been going every afternoon for the past couple of months. He will not be back until dusk.”

“Until … dusk?” He didn't understand. “Then what am I doing—?”

“You will go to him. He has been waiting.”

“He's been up there waiting all day for me?”

“No,” she said. “Waiting for the past couple of months.”

“Up in the mountains,” he muttered, more to himself than the big-shouldered woman.

“That is why you must drink.”

“Why?”

“Because you are not of the People. The land here does not want you to pass through, even if you must, even as it is George's will.” She pointed at the Mason jar with the wooden spoon. Some of the pinkish slop dripped from the end and splattered on the dirty tile floor. “That's why you drink. It will keep you safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“From what you might find in the woods and in the mountains. Or from what might find you.”

“I'm not drinking anything. I don't even know who George is or why he might be expecting me.”

“He has seen a vision,” said the old woman. “And when George Young Calf Ribs sees a vision, it comes true.”

George Young Calf Ribs …

It was a
name.
Hearing it chilled him to the bones.

“Hold on,” he managed, his tongue suddenly thick in his mouth. “Wait a minute… “

“George waits. You must drink.”

Alan turned back to the Mason jar. The stuff looked thick; it would not go down easily. Not to mention what it might taste like … what might be
in
it …

Perhaps stupidly, he grabbed the jar and brought it to his mouth without giving it further thought. Conscious not to inhale, he opened his mouth and gulped down the gelatinous liquid in three aching swallows.

Surprisingly, the stuff was tasteless. There was a dry,
powdery quality to it as well. The sediment at the bottom of the jar oozed into his mouth like a clump of wet sand where—to his surprise and relief—it disintegrated almost instantly.

He set the jar down and gasped. His mouth tasted of menthol. “That wasn't—,” he began, then cringed as his ulcer roared to fiery life. Briefly, fireworks exploded before his eyes.

The old Indian witch cackled, then set down the wooden spoon on the stovetop. She went to a narrow closet door beside the icebox. The door squealed open, eliciting a curious look from the sloppy-eyed hound.

“Jesus,” he wheezed, staring down at his hands as his vision cleared. Sweat broke out along the back of his neck, clammy and warm. “What was in that, anyway?”

From the closet the woman withdrew a long, tapered alpenstock with a silver handgrip. She hobbled toward him, pointing with the staff toward the opaque windows. “The walking stick will guide you through the woods and up through the valley. Out behind the house you will find a path of fine white stone flanked with yellow flowers. Take the path to the river but do not cross it.” Her sour eyes cut to slits, and her voice took on an enigmatic quality. “This is very important—
do not cross the river.
Follow it north. Use the sun as your guide. Your journey will end once you reach the Devil's Stone.”

This was all too much, all too quick.
Am I here? Is this really happening?
Alan had the strong desire to get back in his car and drive the hell home. But even before he managed to stand up from the chair, he knew he would not be going home. Not until he spoke with George Young Calf Ribs.

The old woman handed him the walking stick. It was heavier than it looked.

“If you hear things moving around you in the forest—and you will—,” she added, “do not look at them. If they speak to you, do not answer them.”

“What are they?” He could not mask the awe in his voice.

“They are spirits of those who have been lost. It may also be the
Tsul Kalu
, the slant-eyed and sloping giants coming up from the Shining Rock just to see the white-faced man who passes. They all mean you harm. But if you heed me, schoolteacher, then you have nothing to fear.” She squinted beyond the grime-caked windows and out at the midday sun. “Go now. You need to be back from the mountain before nightfall.”

The old woman all but shoved him toward the front door. As she opened the door, the squeal of its hinges alerted the dog, who raised its head from its paws and stared at Alan with casual detachment.

“Go,” she said again as he stepped onto the rickety porch. “George waits.”

He thought she might watch him as he went around the back of the house in search of the path, but she didn't; the front door slammed with enough force to splinter the frame, leaving him all alone on the porch.

At the back of the house, wind chimes made of hollowed bamboo shoots hung from the eaves, their sound as forlorn as a sailor's lament. Alan spied the path right away—a crushed gravel walkway bordered on either side by yellow bellflowers that ran straight from the rear of the house into a copse of black firs. Beyond, the sky was battleship gray,
the sun a bulb of molten glass.