The Haunted (25 page)

The new plants Claire had bought and planted the other day, he noticed, were all dead.

He needed to go to the hardware store and buy a lock for the gate that opened onto the alley. He should have done so after they first moved in, but it hadn’t seemed very important at the time. Now anything he could do to make entry into their yard more difficult was top priority.

It occurred to Julian that a neighborhood watch might be a good idea. If he could get other people on the street to keep an eye out for Lynch, act as a sort of early warning signal, they might be able to avoid another incident. The only person he felt comfortable approaching was Cole Hubbard, and he walked through the side yard, past the dining room window where Lynch had been spying on him, and out to the front sidewalk. Cole’s car was in the driveway, which meant he was home, and Julian strode past the Ribieros’ house and up to Cole’s front porch, where he rang the doorbell. He heard the chimes sound within the house and thought he heard movement, but though he waited for well over a minute, no one came to the door.

He rang again, waited. Knocked, waited. But there was still no answer.

That was strange.

He knew Cole was in there, and he rang again, knocked again and called out, “Hey, Cole! Open up! It’s Julian!”

“Go away!”

His neighbor’s voice sounded high and frightened, almost unrecognizable, and Julian was shocked as much by the tone as by the words themselves. “Cole? Are you all right?”

“I said go away!” There was an edge of anger now, mixed in with the fear.

He backed up a step, confused. He’d thought the two of them had a rapport; he’d thought they were starting to be friends. What the hell had happened?

This seemed totally out of character. Was it because of what had happened at the party? No. Cole couldn’t have been so freaked-out by the ghost that he’d cut off all contact. After all, he’d stayed behind when the other neighbors had fled and had even offered them some sober, nonpanicky advice.

It could be something that had happened in Cole’s personal life, although Julian didn’t think so. If that were the case, Cole would have been polite but distant, perhaps begging off after a brief, generic discussion and saying he was busy. He wouldn’t have been this hostile.

Or scared.

Julian was starting to get scared, too, and against his better judgment, he knocked on the door again. “What’s wrong? I’m not leaving until you tell me!”

There was a short pause, and the door opened a crack. He saw unkempt hair and two days’ stubble. “Go. Now.”

“Why? I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” The door opened a fraction of an inch wider. Cole
was
angry, Julian saw. But then that anger faded. It was as if he’d been mad at Julian and blamed him for something but had realized after setting eyes on him that Julian was not really at fault. “Go home,” he said tiredly.

“Cole—”

“Your house is calling to me. And I don’t know how much longer I can resist it.”

Your house is calling to me?
What did that even mean? Before he could ask, Cole had closed the door again, and this time it stayed closed. Julian shouted out to his neighbor, knocked on the door and rang the bell, hoping to goad him into a response, but this time Cole remained silent.

Frustrated and confused, Julian headed home, walking slowly, looking around at the other houses on both sides of the street, wondering what his other neighbors were thinking, wondering what they were doing.

The next day, Cole was gone.

The day after that, a For Sale sign went up on his lawn.

At least, Claire thought, she could lose herself in her work.

And her work on the Cortinez case was turning out to be far more compelling than she’d expected. It was not just the legal issues themselves, which were stimulating enough, but the supporting facts in the background, the alternate history that Mr. Cortinez had taught his students. These were accounts she had not heard before, a story with which she was not familiar, and she agreed with the teacher that it was something the students of Jardine, of all of New Mexico, should be taught.

At home, things might be confusing and complicated and weird and frightening, but seeking refuge in her job and in the labyrinthine logic of the law brought her calmness and a kind of peace, helped her cope with the craziness of the rest of her life. A small voice in the back of her head said that she shouldn’t run away from reality like this, that her real duty was to her family, not her clients, but that voice was overridden by what appeared to be a reasonable practicality, an echo of Julian’s position. She was not quite sure what had caused her to adopt such an attitude, but even at home, her fear seemed to be tempered somewhat, although she knew that if she dwelled on that anomaly, she would probably become even more frightened than she was already.

Which was why she didn’t dwell on it.

Although that in itself was atypical behavior.

Claire still thought they should sell the house and move—it was the impetus behind her fierce dedication to this case—but it was not quite the urgent priority it had been. She was braver now than she had been even a few days ago.

Human beings could adapt to anything.

She was also starting to wonder whether Oscar Cortinez’s version of history had some bearing on her own situation. Which was another reason she was so keen to research the particulars of this case. It might end up being nothing, but it seemed to her that the history of New Mexico and Tomasito County, Jardine in particular, provided clues as to the reasons behind the problems that were afflicting her family.

She might be able to win this case
and
figure out why their house was haunted.

And she had no doubt that she would win the case, no matter how good the lawyers turned out to be on the opposing side. The legal issues were clear. Oscar Cortinez
had
been singled out, and the layoff process had
not
been administered fairly. Beyond that, the teacher’s contention that his curriculum incorporated district standards even as it exceeded those standards seemed unimpeachable.

The more Claire read, the more she talked to Oscar, the more convinced she was that his curriculum
should
supersede that of the district. She still had a lot of studying to do, but what she’d learned so far was fascinating.

She’d read all of his lecture notes and had gone to the Web sites he’d listed for her—although, in the usual way of Web sites, the information she found there was sketchy and generic, basically what a person would find in an encyclopedia entry—but the crux of his argument
for a revised look at local history rested on three books that he’d provided her.

The first book, meticulously researched and heavily corroborated, was published by a small press based in Albuquerque. That did not inspire her with confidence, but when she looked up information about the publisher, she learned that it was well respected within academic circles and even had a Pulitzer prize winner on its roster (which would definitely help their case).

The second book was older and much more informal, a casual narrative written in the early 1900s by a former farmer who was also an amateur historian. He’d put together anecdotal stories from longtime residents as well as written accounts from the diaries of relatives and local law enforcement officers. Surprisingly believable and engagingly written, the self-published book not only provided an unofficial look at the history of Tomasito County and the town of Jardine, but shed light on interesting details of everyday life at the turn of the last century.

The third volume was from a different perspective altogether. A chronicle of Spain’s and Mexico’s adventures in the Southwest, the land’s early exploration and colonization, it was based on eyewitness accounts recorded in official reports. Written by a respected Mexican historian and told from the point of view of those colonizing nations, the book had been published in Mexico in the early 1990s and recently translated by a noted professor from ASU.

All three books approached the same subject from different angles, giving, in toto, a complete picture of the area’s previously unrevealed past. Oscar Cortinez had not only done a lot of research and investigation, all of which informed his teaching, but he was providing the students and future citizens of Jardine a valuable look at their own history. He deserved to be commended for his efforts, not
fired, and Claire was going to make sure that this injustice did not go unpunished—as soon as she finished delving into all of the background material the teacher had provided.

Locking the door to her office and pulling down the shades so she wouldn’t be disturbed—

so she couldn’t see Pam

—Claire got a bottle of cold water out of the refrigerator and settled into her desk chair.

She read.

1598

At night, the horses screamed.

The natives had warned them not to go beyond the hills, but Miguel Huerta and his men were not about to allow the primitive fears of savages to deter them from their mission, so they’d continued on, and were sleeping tonight in a wide, riverless valley that remained completely uninhabited, despite the profusion of tribes in the region. A great massacre had once occurred at this location, according to Tsictnako, their guide, and since that day, generations before, people had shunned this place, afraid of the spirit that lived here, the unseen force that had led brother to slaughter brother, that had caused madness to descend upon all survivors, be they victor or victim.

The guide had not wanted to go here, had led them over the hills only under threat of torture, and he had deserted them sometime during the night, leaving them alone in this hostile, godforsaken land, a fact Huerta discovered when he was awakened by the screaming of the horses.

It was a terrible, unholy sound, unlike anything he had ever heard. All of his men were roused out of sleep
by the monstrous cries of the animals, and many of them began crossing themselves and praying, rising to their knees, begging God to protect them from the evil that was here. The more practical soldiers grabbed their swords and prepared to defend the camp, but the horses were already loose and running, still screaming, their voices like that of old women being slaughtered, and the soldiers were forced to chase after them. Huerta remained at first, to make sure that they were not under attack, but when it became clear that there was no assault, and that the crazed horses had chewed through the tethers on their own, rather than being released by men, he ordered six of the praying soldiers to stand guard, while he followed the men chasing after the horses.

The night was dark, and while the moon was out, little of its light illuminated the world below. The group of men who had started off before him had brought a torch with them, and after picking up one for himself as well, Huerta followed their bobbing, weaving light through the weeds and low brush, over small knolls and hollows.

Twenty horses. They had twenty horses altogether, and every one of them had taken off in the same direction, as though chased by something.

Or drawn by something.

He caught up to his men before they found the horses, and all of them stumbled upon the animals together. The steeds were still screaming, but the sound here carried strangely, and it seemed that they remained quite a way off. So it was a surprise when Huerta, who was in the lead, passed between two unusually full and prickly bushes, only to see his torchlight fall on the animals’ bodies.

They had set upon one another. They were rolling on the ground, fighting, a writhing mass of muscle, hair and
hoof that in the flickering orange light looked like one giant multiheaded monster. Some of the horses were already dead, their stomachs bloody and bitten open, chunks ripped out of their necks and flanks, their flesh being eaten by the snapping mouths of their fellow steeds. It was an aberrant and unnatural sight, one so shocking and sickening that the men who happened upon it stood motionless for several precious moments, unsure of what to do. It was Huerta alone who retained his wits, who rushed forward and ordered his men to do the same, to grab whatever they could—tether or mane—and try to separate the furiously battling animals. But that was easier said than done. The horses were larger than men, and, struggling, biting, kicking, rolling over one another in the darkness, screaming, they were nearly impossible to separate. By the time the soldiers had pulled two of them away from the heap, the others were either dying or dead.

With their last breaths, some of the fading horses were viciously biting into their brethren, their flat, square teeth cannibalistically ripping into the rough flesh surrounding them.

Huerta ordered the men holding the ropes that had been lassoed around the necks of the two rescued horses to take the animals back to camp. He had no idea how they were to continue on with nearly all of their pack animals dead, but he would find a way, even if soldiers had to act as slaves.

The dust that had been kicked up by the melee had started to settle, and his eyes peered into the slowly clearing gloom. He was not sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. For behind the sluggishly stirring mound of dying horses was a small hut, the first sign of man they had seen since coming over the hills. It was a strange sort of structure, made from dead branches and
sticks, a primitive shelter more akin to the wild growth of the surrounding wilderness than any form of human habitation. Had it not been for the reddish glow emanating from within, he might not have even noticed it.

He did notice it, though, and he did not like it. The unusual construction of the hut bothered him in a way he could not explain, and that reddish light seemed hellish. His first instinct was to turn away and take his men as far from this place as possible. But he was a leader, entrusted by the king to explore this northern land, and it was his duty to investigate all that he encountered, no matter how unnatural.