Jumlin's Spawn (4 page)

They would never buy the rest of her defense.

She carefully hid the letter in the left compartment
of her small bag. On the right side compartment was her e-reader.
Wasn't that ironic justice?

She turned up the air conditioner vent in the guest
room, where it felt as stuffy as she remembered the room always
being. The coolness came through immediately. The breath of the air
conditioning helped mask the outside sounds into a smoother quiet.
However, the slats vented through another source of sound – the
hard shock of muffled voices punching through the wall. Two male
voices, a stream of playful laughter flowing through them, their
words grinding together like hard flesh on flesh. The tangle of
groans quieted into a softer moaning sound…probably kissing, she
decided.

She fought to not picture it. It had to be oral sex.
As she had said in the letter, the brutal pleasure of it, the
intensely personal, invasive oral sex. It was happening all over
again, on the other side of the wall.

Elfie flicked on the TV beside her bed and fought for
focus.

The groans intensified. She turned up the TV
sound.

The memory kept flickering into view. The memory of
the last time she had seen them – in Yancey's room. Yancey's
brown-skinned muscles on top the tension-gripped sweaty body of her
other best friend. They had looked like wild animals, fucking in
heat.

As the sound from the other room grew louder, she
turned up the TV some more and hoped for relief. When that did
nothing, she got up and shut the vents to try to block out the
sound. It wasn't helping.

But they had to know she could hear. So what was
this? Retribution? A cumulative “fuck you” of sound? Something
else?

She gathered herself up on the bed then covered
herself in blankets. Tomorrow would be for business. Tomorrow, she
would get beyond all this, do what she had to do, and go the hell
back to New Orleans -- even if her heart would be breaking every
step of the way.

Finally, the men stopped. The sounds quieted. She
turned up the TV and focused on the sound. Somewhere between the
infomercial and the last blare of a silly talk show, she mercifully
fell asleep.

Chapter Two

She showered, dressed, and grabbed coffee and a bagel
from Yancey's cupboard before crawling, with her overnight bag,
into Oliver's big Range Rover. The amazing Elfie accomplished all
this before anyone else awoke.

She sat there in the jeep, looking through a detailed
list of the locations of exsanguine buffalo. Clipped to it was a
graphic veterinarian's report on the condition of the carcasses.
Charming.

After what might have been forty-five minutes, the
driver's door to the Range Rover popped open. Oliver, wearing a
weird combination of brown dungarees and a red ball cap, ascended
sleekly and easily into the driver's seat. He looked around to
Elfie, huddled in the backseat with her studies.

“Anything interesting?” Oliver asked.

She waved the list at him. “This is one hell of a lot
of dead buffalo.”

Oliver nodded.  “It‘s escalating.”

Elfie shook her head.  “It’s increasing.”

“It’s turkey vultures,” Yancey added, suddenly
climbing into the passenger seat.

Elfie frowned in thought. “Not unless buzzards have
started leaving carrion behind.”

Yancey shrugged a little.  “I’m a cop,
remember?  I‘m a skeptic.”

 “I’m a scientist, remember? So am I,” Elfie
said. “You said our first stop is Wolfram Ten Bears?”

Yancey opened a map on the dashboard as Oliver
started the engine. “Yeah, he's an elder. But we call him Billy
Jack. Believe me, you'll see why.”

****

She saw why.

He drove an old wheezing motorcycle out to greet them
as their jeep rolled through the wide park gate.  He wore a
scruffy old leather jacket that damn near matched the color of his
leathery old face. 

“That's the elder?” Elfie asked incredulously.

“You were expecting a war bonnet and a peace pipe?”
Yancey asked, tossing a grin her way.

“I'm from Rapid City, remember? Of course not. I just
wasn't expecting...him.”

When the elder dismounted the motorcycle, he yanked
off the old gloves that jibed with his jacket and almost matched
his face. As he walked up to the jeep, they didn't leave the
vehicle, and he didn’t extend a hand to Yancey. He just glared at
them with eyes that looked locked and loaded. 

“Yancey Crow Wolf, where you been keeping yourself?”
the old guy asked Yancey through stained teeth.  He stared
hard over at Elfie in the backseat. “These your friends?”

Yancey blocked his view of her while he popped open
the side door.  “Yeah, she’s Elfie Hardesty, and he’s Oliver
Ryan. Hop in the jeep. It's more comfortable than your old
camper.”

Elfie felt grateful to be in the rear seat. The old
man's conception of personal hygiene seemed startlingly different
from hers. He turned around to stare hard at her again with
egg-yellow eyes, probably cataracts, until Yancey climbed over the
console to yank the old man around so that he faced his
direction.

“Okay, let's hear it,” Yancey said.

Ten Bears looked back at him. “You asked me to dance,
Yancey.  You lead, I follow. Ask your questions.”

“Okay,” Yancey said. “I need you to tell me all the
stuff you're supposed to tell me in as short a time as possible.
About the Angel Caves and the Jumlin vampire crap.”

“First,” the old man said, “you tell me what you
believe.”

“I don't believe in anything,” Yancey said.

“You don't believe in Jumlin, you mean?” the old man
asked.

“No, I don't believe in anything I can't see, hear,
touch, taste or smell. Not our gods, not European gods. I'm an
atheist. And I certainly don't believe in Jumlin and any kind of
backward, superstitious mysticism. But, I have promised my
grandmother and the elders I would speak to you.”

“At least you listen to your grandmother,” the old
man said. “If the locals had listened to the Indians about the
mouse fever, the Hantavirus wouldn’t have killed so many. Indian
myths told them all about the mouse fever that came after the big
rains.”

 “The Hantavirus was identified by science,”
Yancey said.  “Jumlin is a fairy tale.  You can’t compare
the two.”

Oliver turned around in his seat. “Mr. Ten Bears, I'm
an anthropologist. I have more time for mythology than my rude
friend here. Just tell us the Jumlin story, and we'll be on our
way.”

The old man nodded toward Oliver. “It’s more than a
story.  It’s a myth.  You know what a myth is, young
man?”

“It’s a lie,” Yancey said.

Oliver softly cleared his throat, as though to
redirect the conversation. He dragged a hand back through his blond
hair.  “The writer Joseph Campbell said a myth is a public
dream.  A dream experienced by a lot of people. It reveals a
deeper truth.”

“This dream is a nightmare,” the old man said. 
“Jumlin told the first lie. He was the first liar, the great
deceiver. He was among the oldest entities, so he was very
powerful. No one could trust him. To protect the rest, he was
imprisoned in the Realm of Spirit Shadows.”

“If he was so powerful, how could they imprison him?”
Yancey asked tartly.

“He was so old and powerful. He was also very weak.
His only great power was in his ability to deceive.”

“Typical Indian myth,” Yancey said, “it makes
absolutely no sense.”

Oliver gave Yancey another sharp warning glance.
“Native Americans are largely aboriginal Asians. What you’ve
described, Mr. Ten Bears, sounds like a kind of early Zen thinking.
It makes perfect sense. Please ignore him and go on.”

“There was a medicine man of a tribe,” Billy Jack
continued, “who was brother to the chief of the ten tribes. He made
a pact with Jumlin so the medicine man’s barren wife might have
children.”

“What kind of pact?” Oliver asked, leaning
forward.

“Jumlin promised the medicine man that, if he used
dark magic to return Jumlin to the real world, Jumlin would give
the medicine man many sons and daughters.  But when the
medicine man brought him back, all Jumlin did was possess him, body
and soul.  With the medicine man’s body, he brought forth
children, but they all had Jumlin‘s evil seed in them.”

“Don't you hate it when that happens?” Yancey
asked.

“You're not doing a good job of listening, as your
grandmother wanted,” the old man said, his lips drawing up into a
patient grin.  “Jumlin’s son, Laughing Bear, was just as evil
as he but more cunning.  While Jumlin was believed to be
destroyed by the magic knowledge of the Hunters, Laughing Bear
escaped his father’s fate.”

“So where is he supposed to be?” Oliver asked. 
“This Laughing Bear guy.”

The old man continued, “Laughing Bear and his
brothers and sisters still walk the earth.  They feed on the
blood and flesh of the beasts of the field, on the humans, and they
breed with human women. That is what is happening now in the Angel
Caves.”

“I get the allusion, okay?” Oliver said. “The spawn
supposedly feed on the blood of the beasts of the field, in other
words, the buffalo.  Thank you for the information. We'll take
all that under advisement.”

“You may,” the old man said, nodding toward Yancey.
“He won't.”

“Look, Billy, I don't mean to be rude,” Yancey said,
“but it's just, there's no evidence there is any reality to this.
But, if we find signs of a buffalo-blood-sucking fiend, I’ll let
you know.  Conversation over.”

“For your own sake,” Ten Bears said, “and that of
your friends, don't dismiss this too quickly. The creatures will do
everything in their power to keep the Caves. They are wicked beyond
compare. More evil than the deceiver himself. If you need help, you
should talk to the trees, Yancey.”

Yancey shook his head. “I've always found trees to be
awful conversationalists. But philámayaye, tókša akhé,” Yancey said
with a smile that said “now get the hell out of our Jeep.”

As Ten Bears left, five minutes passed before Elfie
saw the university transport arrive with some nervous-looking
undergrad bearing a suitcase-sized container.

“Is this one of those new super-lasers, like in the
comic books?” the big-eyed undergrad asked as Oliver unlocked the
hatch for Elfie and the undergrad to slide the contraption inside
the cab.

“Yup,” Elfie said. “I'm really Laser Lady. We're
delivering it to Condorman.”

“Really?” the undergrad asked.

“No,” she said plainly.

After the puzzled young man had driven away, Yancey
shook his head back at Elfie as she reclaimed her rear seat in the
jeep. “You're merciless, you know,” he called back to her.

“Well, he did ask,” she said.

****

The jostling of the Jeep was constant and steady,
lulling Elfie into a ready-made sleep.  She had tried to read
but kept losing the line against the hazy horizon.  She found
herself re-reading the same page two or three times.  Finally,
she just shut down the e-reader and focused on the drone of the
wheels. 

More than camping, she hated car trips. And, she
truly hated any car trips that would end in camping.

She began to lose the fight to keep her eyes from
closing.  She would think she was still awake until she saw a
small and stark white face mask staring in at her, as if a kabuki
child hung off the side of the Jeep, and that would jolt her
awake.  She would blink, look around, determine to stay alert,
and the cycle would begin anew. 

It was only when the movement stopped that she fully
awoke. 

She blinked around.  She listened to the drone
down of the engine as it murmured softly into silence.  She
was about to ask if they were “there already” when she held her
wristwatch up to a stream of light and saw that nearly two hours
had passed. 

“Unlisted dead buffalo that looks like a fresh kill,”
Oliver said, shifting the car into neutral.

“Wonderful,” Elfie groaned.

They left the jeep and walked the short distance to
the dead animal. Elfie studied what remained of it, for all the
good it did her.

“See anything?” Oliver asked.

“I wish I knew more veterinary science. We'd need a
necropsy to say anything for certain.” Elfie reached over to feel
the upper musculature. She pushed deeply through the pelt,
palpating for a major artery. “It feels suspiciously soft.
Exsanguination is certainly a possibility.”

“I'll go check the area,” Yancey said, walking
away.

Oliver walked up to stand beside her. “How did it
die?”

“No obvious signs of disease. No indications of an
accident.”  She shook her head thoughtfully.  “I’d say it
was a drug deal gone bad.”

“Very funny.”

“Well, you asked a stupid question,” Elfie replied.
“I don't know. I'm not a vet. It's dead. There's no blood that I
can tell. That's about the limit of my knowledge of animal
anatomy.”

Oliver smirked, playfully slapping at a shoulder.
“Can you at least tell if it died from natural causes?”

“All deaths have natural causes, don’t they?” she
asked, smirking back.  “It’s what brings about the natural
cause that is the question.  But I’d say a buffalo of this
size doesn’t come down easy.”

“I'd agree. Took more than a couple of people to kill
it.”

“We know they weren't Sioux,” Yancey said, walking
back to stand with them, “and very few Sioux would kill near
ceremonial sites. There's a mound of what looks like cremains just
up the rise. We should look at it next.”

They walked together quickly until they rounded a
rock shelf to a pile of what appeared to be bone bits and
ash.  A mixture of spice, leaves, or dried plants of some kind
had been added to the circle around the ash.