The Croning (28 page)

Don wasn’t much of a tracker, but he figured no one had set foot on this ground for decades. His chest pained him and sweat and rocketing blood pressure clouded his vision, and he staggered. The big central boulder was without question the same as that in the photos, yet his sudden queasiness sprang from a darker, hidden source that he couldn’t name. He imagined debauched reeds and clashing cymbals, demonic masks bathed in bloody firelight, an axe…

“Hang on, old-timer,” Hank said and helped him kneel. “You having a heart attack? Oh, man alive—don’t do that to me. Here, take a drink.” He pressed his canteen to Don’s lips.

Don swallowed and coughed and in a few moments the fugue lifted and he was himself again, but for trembling hands and a racing heart. “Thanks, lad. No, I’m A-okay. Getting too old for this nonsense, heh.”

Hank had already turned away, rubbing the neck of the canteen on his sleeve before he screwed the cap back on. He stared at the mossy boulder, cocking his head. “Man, something odd about that damned rock, ain’t there? Rest a minute, huh? I’m going to check it out.” With that he slung his canteen and tiptoed across the clearing. His tracks, scuffing aside dead leaves and needles and indenting the soft, dark earth, were the only tracks. No animal sign. The drone of flies and mosquitoes, nothing larger.

Don stood, and quieting a chorus of ghostly misgivings that arose from the pit of his subconscious, he carefully made his way to Hank’s side, snapping a few pictures to compare with the set at the house.

A portion of the boulder was concave along its vertical axis and a broad, shallow channel scored its length. Spaced at wide intervals were four brackets of tarnished and corroded bronze. He had no difficulty imagining a figure pinioned spread-eagle upon the stone, manacled hand and foot. Several feet off center, and obscured by a layer of needles and dirt, was the fire pit—one of several that lighted the scene of ritual and revelry. He said with a lightness that was superficial, “Argyle wasn’t kidding. People getting up to hijinks and such.” But not children, not amateurs. This was too elaborate, too serious.

“I dunno,” Hank said. “Kinda weird. Yeah.” He scratched his head and frowned, conveying annoyance rather than curiosity. Obviously the implications of the groove, the brackets, the fire pit, were lost on him. Likely he was too young to appreciate the multitude of Hammer films that Don and Michelle had devoured in their prime (this despite the fact such fare always gave Don dreadful nightmares). Don knew how this went down in the creepy occult flicks of the gory-hoary ’60s and ’70s.

“I’m going to ring our fellows. Kurt will be ecstatic.” Don hit Kurt’s number on his cell. While listening to the rings, he adjusted his glasses and scanned the surroundings, momentarily visualizing a mob of hooded figures poised to swoop from the forest, scythes waving with murderous intent. The call went to voicemail. “Well, that’s odd.”

“Odd, what’s odd? Don’t say ‘odd’ in the woods. You got service? I got bars on mine. Lemme try.” Hank did indeed attempt to raise Argyle, with no effect. “Not answering. What the hell are they doing that they can’t answer huh?”

“Let’s not fret. They’ll be along soon.” Don skirted the edge of the boulder, noting that its creepers and vines appeared simultaneously vibrant and voluptuously decayed; spoiled sap and pulp had burst through and made puddles in the weeds, and these reeked as befouled vegetation does. On the far side, the clearing narrowed to a saddle between the trees. On either side of the four-foot span was a sheer drop of fifty or sixty feet into a tangle of brush and more big rocks.

The narrow ridge had once served as a path; the depression made from countless tramping feet remained in evidence despite encroaching bushes and weeds. Ahead was another opening ringed by a stand of old firs, and within was what Don took as a queerly jumbled pile of huge white stone slabs. “Oh, my Jesus,” he said after a moment, and stopped. The vertigo returned, as did the pain in his chest. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing slowly, calming his thoughts. He looked again, and the pile was still there. “Oh, my Jesus.”

“Hey, I’ve seen this before.” Hank stepped past him. “On National Geographic, or on one of those history shows. It’s a megalith.”

“No, it’s called a dolmen,” Don said, professional pique overriding his anxiety for the moment. “A tomb.
Maybe
a tomb. Nobody is certain.”

“Cool as hell. Indians built these?”

“Neolithic tribes constructed them. But not here. Dolmens are in Europe, some other foreign locales. There aren’t any in North America.”

“Huh. Well, I’m looking at one, yeah?”

“So it seems.” Don wiped his glasses and then simply gaped in amazement. The dolmen was built from a horizontal slab of granite weighing at least one hundred tons, supported by several crudely shaped vertical stones of similar size; these pillars were carved with mostly obliterated symbols that might’ve been an alphabet. The entrance was an off-kilter rectangle, and overhung by vines and morning glory. Its lintel was fashioned into a visage ruined by decay and mold. The faint light coming through the canopy combined with the mist, tinting the structure an eerie blue, as if he were observing it through smoke or a distorted camera lens.

“Lover mine, this is a bad idea,” Michelle said. Don whirled, almost spraining his knee, and a few dead leaves fluttered past. His heart, his heart… He rubbed his chest and groaned.

Hank didn’t notice. “Man, this has to be forgotten tribal grounds, or something. You think it’s safe to go inside?” He shrugged off his pack and rummaged around until he retrieved a flashlight.

“Hank, that’s not wise. It could be unstable. Could be a deadfall, or wild animals…” Don watched him click the light on and off. “Really. I don’t recommend this course of action. I know some fellows at the university. We’ll head back to the house, give them a ring. Probably be a team out here tomorrow. Best to wait. Safe before sorry, eh?”

“Animals? Nah, no tracks. Hang tight. Be a sec.” Hank flashed the light at Don’s face and then trundled away, pausing to examine the entrance; an ant inspecting a mausoleum. He scrunched his shoulders and ducked inside. His tiny beam of light vanished instantly.

“Oh, boy.” Don should’ve protested more strongly, made further attempts to stop the boy. He didn’t possess the energy or the will. He settled onto a rotten log and unrolled a paper sandwich bag and huffed into it until he felt more well, and after he’d recovered a bit, he sipped brandy from the stash of mini-bottles in the bottom of his pack. Michelle had stockpiled them from hundreds of international flights. He fidgeted.

The dolmen was an impossibility. Surveyors would’ve noted it ages ago, sitting as it did on county land. It had to be visible from the air and someone, somewhere would’ve laid in its coordinates, marked it on a topographical map. The Redfield Museum would have sent a team of photographers and archeologists. There would be a display, a documentary, a book. If the dolmen existed, if it were possible, then it would be on the record and Don would know everything about it.

“I should’ve stopped that fool,” he said, fully aware of the absurdity of his wizened and decrepit self attempting to prevent a young thug such as Hank from doing whatever he wished. At twenty-five, hell, even forty-five, Don would’ve cheerfully rabbit-punched the bugger and laid him out for a nap. He glanced at his knotted and knurled hands and winced in sorrow and regret. Meanwhile, a fractional piece of his worn soul was slightly interested in what might happen. For some reason he began to mutter the old advertising line
Roaches check in, but they don’t check out!
And promptly forced himself to desist.

Time passed and nothing happened, so he finished the brandy and tried Kurt’s cell again, which came to naught, and then he cracked another little bottle and sipped that and waited, and as he waited, like the encroaching shadows of the forest, the shadows of dread in his subconscious lengthened and stretched across his entire mind. He was nervous that Hank didn’t return, nervous that Kurt and Argyle didn’t answer their phones, nervous that mid-afternoon was sliding past and the world remained a murky fairy ground that would soon enough become pitch dark and wholly dangerous. Certainly nervousness was in order. None of this explained his rising fear, an emotion more powerful by magnitudes than mere nervousness, however. Fear that crept from the middle of his belly and spread into his chest until he shook and sweated and imagined phantom music, phantom shrieks.

“Yes, love, it’s going to get
so
dark,” Michelle said. More leaves, floating in their death spirals to the ground. “The servitors will be waking up.”

He clapped his hand over his mouth—Michelle hadn’t said anything;
Don
was talking to himself, and heaven have mercy, that wasn’t a positive sign. Against his palm he said, “Good grief, talking to myself? How long has this gone on?” No reply, not in his head, nor elsewhere.

In due course he heaved to his feet and shouted for bullheaded young Hank, received the echo of his own cry, muffled and impotent. Even the crows and mosquitoes had fallen silent. By the reddish slant of a falling sunbeam, or configuration of shadow, a tree opposite the dolmen caught his eye. A redwood of significant girth, and as old as the hills, its limbs the size of smaller trees and its scales of bark as tall as a man. Easily one of the largest and hoariest specimens he’d seen north of California.

The broad sheaves of bark drew his attention from the dolmen and whatever drama occurred within; drew him shuffling and stumbling closer until his nose was inches away, and still he required a few more seconds before he recognized the hidden puzzle.

A symbol was etched into the wood at eye level; a reverse C, albeit with a narrower gap. The symbol was blackened and glazed and partially refilled by the growth of the tree, and it measured on the order of a basketball, and upon closer scrutiny, he beheld delicate variations and lines that suggested the object represented the spinal column of a sinuous creature, a serpent, although the skull was enlarged and cruelly horned. Of course, this was none other than the embossment upon the cover of
The Black Guide
.

He retreated several steps and the larger picture coalesced, natural splinters and fractures aligning to form a door, or hatch, in the bole of the tree. He recognized knotted sinews as hinges, a knothole as a latch in a sheaf of thick bark scarcely wider than his shoulders and thrice his height—a neatly fitted panel that blended into its surroundings as to be nigh-invisible. Braced against the trunk was a long, slender rod that tapered to a hook, not unlike the poles he used at university to open classroom skylights. Obviously the crook was intended to snag the knothole and pop the panel ajar.

“Are you really thinking about it?” He imagined Michelle clearly and unambiguously at his side, dressed in blue, a blue wrap and fancy sunglasses disguising her expression. She was always her younger self in his daydreams, while he remained leathery and spent. He’d never been capable of matching her. “Stop and use your brain. What’s in there? A hunter’s cache? Moldering pelts, spoiled meat? A drug lord’s bale of cocaine? Or worse—a body! What if it’s murder? This deep in the woods, it just might be nefarious. You’re too old for nefarious doings, Don. Your hands are shaking, you’re making pee drops in your underwear. Baby, you’ve got every reason to be afraid.
The Black Guide
is bad medicine. The worst. Don’t pull a Hank on me. Sweetie, are you really going to do this?”

Don was indeed considering the crook and the panel and what might lay inside the hollow tree, although not from simple curiosity as might’ve compelled him once upon a time;
dread
compelled him, the way it compels a man to look into an abyss, to entertain the notion of leaping in. He actually touched the rod before jolting to his senses and withdrawing his hand as if from a snake. He wiped his sweaty brow and cleaned his glasses and walked back to the path and stood twenty yards from the entrance of the dolmen, that keyhole slot in its dour face, and called for Hank. Again nothing, and this time when he tried to ring Kurt and Argyle the pane said NO SERVICE.

The forest closed in and the air dimmed. He shivered, hot and cold, and zipped his coat as Michelle would’ve chided him to do. He grimly studied the dolmen, hoping it might appear less gargantuan and passively inimical if he stared long enough. Twenty minutes since Hank vanished inside. Twenty minutes was an eon. He squared his jaw and fished out his own flashlight. “Oh, bloody blazes. I’ve got to go in after him, don’t I?” Ghostly Michelle said,
Is that rhetorical? By the way, the servitors are coming
.

At the threshold of the prehistoric tomb, the powerful stink of mold and rotting vegetation obliged him to pinch his nostrils while brandishing the flashlight at arm’s length. Only vines and spongy moss, and not a rank carcass in a pool of maggot-clabbered blood that his morbid imagination conjured on the spot. He called, “Hank! Hey, kid, where the blazes are you?”

The interior shouldn’t have encompassed more than fifteen to twenty feet as the massive slabs were of such a dimension as to leave a mere pocket within their confines relative to the dolmen’s overall size. Also, despite gaps being covered by brush and vines, sunlight should’ve seeped through and provided at least dim illumination. Yet his flashlight beam revealed a floor covered in dirt and creepers and the suggestion of a rude column decorated with more carvings, and penetrated no farther into the black. The relic’s spatial incongruity summoned Don’s dizziness and he fought to maintain composure.

His phone rang. Retreating to fumble the cell from his pocket, Don tripped and sprawled in the leaves. He managed to connect before it went to the recording.

Kurt said from a gulf, “Dad? Dad? You okay?”

“Yes, right as rain,” Don said, trying to ignore the hundred firecrackers popping in his right knee and ankle, the scrape on his palm where he’d skinned it across the ground, the bruise to his dignity. “Where are you two?”

The line hissed and snapped and howling overlaid this interference. Kurt was shouting, though his words were faint. “Dad, get back to camp. Wait—fuck camp. Point toward the house and get moving. We’ll meet you there. Dad, you hear me?”