Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2 (20 page)

Moments later Jim Whitefeather left on foot to go for help.

Then Stella’s dream flashed forward hours later. They found Jim’s mutilated body outside the trailer, propped up against a tree like a trophy. His gun was gone. The limbs of his body were bent at strange angles, bones snapped underneath his skin and clothing. His mouth hung open way too wide and his eyes were gone leaving behind deep black holes.

And then the dream flashed forward again. A panic settled among them. They wanted to get out of there but the phones, computers, and radios still didn’t work. And none of the trucks would start. They even switched a few of the batteries for spare ones, but they were dead too.

They didn’t have any weapons. They didn’t have any way to communicate with anyone else. They were stuck way out here in the middle of the desert with a madman out there stalking them.

But they would learn soon enough that it wasn’t a person out there … it was something else, something ancient and powerful, something beyond imagination.

After Jim’s body was gone some of the people wanted to interrogate David; they were frustrated that he wasn’t telling them anything.

“He knows something,” Phil said. “I know he does. He knows who’s out there. We need to make him tell us what he knows or we’re all going to die.”

Stella was the one who stuck up for David. Jake helped her at first, but after Jim came back and called them outside, after he started asking for things, then taking another one of them away in the middle of the night, the fear started taking hold of them. Even Jake began to turn against David right at the very end. People could change; fear could change them … even the bravest, even the best of people.

But Stella wouldn’t let them hurt David.

Protect the boy,
Jim had told her before he left, staring at her with that fear in his eyes.

And then Jim became a messenger for that thing, an eyeless puppet for it. Jim wanted the boy. He promised that all of this terror would end if they just killed the boy …

Stella snapped awake from the nightmare, her breath caught in her throat. She sat up in bed, looking around at the unfamiliar room. Her gaze rested on David beside her, still sleeping. Then she saw Cole sitting in the chair by the table. He had his shirt back on and he was staring at her, concerned.

“You okay?” Cole asked her.

The TV was off. The drapes were closed. The room was murky even though it was still daytime outside.

“Yeah,” Stella said, taking in some deep breaths. She looked at Cole again. He seemed to be stretched out in the chair, half-asleep. “How long have I been asleep?”

“About two hours,” Cole told her, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t wake David up.

Stella nodded, her mind beginning to chug along again now. She was in a motel room with Cole and David, resting for the first time in such a long time. But they couldn’t stay here long. It would only be a matter of time before the Ancient Enemy found them.

“You should get some rest now,” Stella said.

“I’ve been dozing a little,” he said, but she could tell it was a lie.

“Just stretch out on the other bed,” she told him as she moved slowly to the side of the bed, trying not to disturb David. “I’ll stay awake for a few hours.”

Cole seemed like he was going to argue about it, but he surprised her by getting up and walking a few steps over to the bed. He only had his jeans, socks, and a T-shirt on. His face looked drawn, the bags heavy under his eyes. He needed sleep or he was probably going to pass out soon.

“Don’t let me sleep past dark,” he told her after he rolled over onto his side. “We should leave before it gets dark.”

Stella nodded even though he was facing away from her, already breathing heavily. “Okay,” she said.

But she had different plans.

Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn

S
tella waited thirty minutes, making sure Cole was deep asleep. She wasn’t sure how heavy a sleeper he was, but if he was feeling even remotely safe like she had been, and if he was half as exhausted as she was, then he might be dead to the world for a few hours. This was her chance to get away from him.

He’d said that he wanted to go with them all the way down to the Navajo lands, but she wasn’t sure if she could believe him. And with the cops searching everywhere for him and his crew, she and David might do better on their own.

She got up and walked over to where she had laid her clothes out. She kept her eyes on Cole the whole time as she put her shoes on and her other heavier shirt. She shoved her pistol down into her waistband at the small of her back, and then she stuffed the packs of money back down into her socks. She still had some packs of money in her coat pockets. She collected a small bag of snacks, two bottles of water and kept them by her coat.

Cole hadn’t moved at all.

Stella got David up. He didn’t even make a sound; he just opened his eyes and stared at her. She gestured at him with hand signals, hoping he understood that she wanted him to leave with her.

She helped David get his shoes on, his heavier shirt, and then his coat.

They were ready to go. Cole was lying on his side, facing the door. He didn’t have a sheet or blanket on him. He was breathing so heavy he was practically snoring. Stella and David stood near the TV, both of them watching Cole. She glanced at David, locking eyes with him. She nodded, indicating that they were ready to go. She took David’s hand and they walked past the foot of Cole’s bed.

She had a flashback of sneaking out of the trailer at the dig site while everyone else slept, while David was outside.

As they got around the bed and stepped into the small hallway where the bathroom was, Stella kept her eyes on Cole. She expected his eyes to be wide open, a smile on his lips as he caught them in the act of leaving him. She had tried to concoct a lie, but anything she said would be transparent; Cole would see right through it, he would know what she was doing.

But Cole wasn’t awake. His mouth was partly open, and he was still breathing heavy.

The trick was going to be opening the door without waking Cole. She stood at the door and turned the deadbolt knob as slowly and carefully as she could. It slid back out of the doorframe back into the door without a sound. She pushed down on the metal handle slowly, and then pulled the door open. She was surprised that the door hadn’t made much of a noise, but they seemed like newer doors, like this motel had been remodeled recently.

One last look at Cole as they slipped out the door into the hallway … he was still sleeping.

She closed the door gently, letting it click into place as it closed. It sounded so loud to her in the silence of the hallway, but she didn’t hear anything beyond the door in their room, no shouts of alarm or stomping feet as Cole ran towards the door.

“Come on, let’s go,” Stella whispered to David.

David hesitated for a moment, staring up at her like he didn’t understand why they were leaving Cole behind.

“We have to,” she whispered. “I told you, we can’t trust him.”

David finally took her hand and they hurried down the hall.

The motel was so quiet. She knew there weren’t many guests at all, but it seemed deadly quiet. She couldn’t help feeling that this was a bad sign.

They hurried down the wide carpeted steps to the lobby. When they reached the lobby floor, Stella and David walked hand in hand, hurrying towards the large glass doors in the wall of glass.

“Going somewhere?” the clerk asked from behind his counter on the other side of the room.

Stella looked over at the man as they walked, already forcing a smile on her face. But then she stopped dead in her tracks.

There was something wrong with the clerk. He was standing in the same spot he’d been in when he had checked them in. He was wearing the same clothes, the red vest and white button-down shirt. But it was the expression on his face that had stopped her cold. She’d seen that flaccid, dead expression a few times now … she’d seen it on Jim Whitefeather’s face, and she’d seen it on Frank’s face when he had come back and asked for things.

Stella let David’s hand go and she inched her hand to her side, moving it slowly towards her back for the gun.

The clerk didn’t blink as he stared at her, his face so slack he looked dead.

“Uh …” Stella stammered. “We’re just going out for something to eat.” She felt David’s hand pawing at her; she heard the whimper in his throat.

“You can’t leave,” the clerk said and his mouth popped up into a smile like invisible strings had just jerked the corners of his mouth up. But his eyes behind his round glasses were still cold and dead.

Stella whipped her gun out and aimed it at the clerk.

The clerk stayed right where he was, the bottom half of his body hidden behind the long wooden counter. The counter was hiding something horrible, she was sure of that. He stood very still and his smile dropped back down into a blank expression, his eyes still staring at her. “I’m going to get the boy. You can’t run forever. Sooner or later you’ll need to sleep, and that’s when I will be there, looking down at you.”

Something was moving underneath the counter. Stella could hear the squelchy sound of something wet whipping around down there. Then she saw the ends of a few whipcord tentacles poking up above the edge of the counter, black and slimy, like snakes peeking up at them. And then they disappeared back down behind the counter again.

“I want to show you something,” the clerk said, his voice lower and more guttural now. He turned to his left, but only his top half seemed to turn and Stella heard the crunching of bone, the tearing and stretching of skin, the ripping of flesh. His legs propelled him to the little wooden door at the end of the counter, and she could hear his footsteps behind the counter which sounded like a clattering noise, like someone trying to get their footing.

I don’t want to see this.

Stella aimed her gun at the clerk as he stumbled out from the little doorway in the counter. The lower half of his body had been twisted completely around, his legs backwards, his feet poking out behind him. He walked forward, shuffling unfamiliarly on his backwards legs. The top of the clerk’s pants underneath his vest was caked with dried blood. Strings of drying intestines and gore hung down to his thighs among the ragged tatters of the bottom of his button-down shirt.

“Stay away from us!” Stella yelled. She took a step back and she still felt David clinging to her with one hand. He was still whimpering with fear.

Then the clerk stopped walking towards them. He just stood there, staring at Stella and David with that blank expression on his face. Then he suddenly smiled again and looked towards the lobby doors.

Stella couldn’t help following his gaze.

There was someone outside those doors—a young man running up to the lobby doors from the parking lot. He was wearing a brightly colored jacket, jeans, and rubber boots. He had a knit cap on but no gloves.

And he was carrying a gun.

Travis entered the lobby through one of the glass doors. Melted snow dripped off of his pants and boots, leaving smears of water on the tiled floor.

“Get out of here!” Stella told the young man.

Travis raised his gun, but he didn’t point it at the thing that used to be the clerk. Instead, he aimed it right at her and David.

“What the hell are you doing?” Stella yelled at him.

The kid couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen years old, she thought. He looked like a clean-cut kid. And now she saw that he was crying, his arm shaking as he aimed his gun at them.

“Back away from the kid, lady,” the teenager said.

Stella didn’t move. She pointed her gun at the new intruder. She knew now that he had come for David. The Ancient Enemy had done something to this young man. “You can’t do this,” she told him.

“I don’t have a choice,” he said as he cried harder.

Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn

C
ole opened his eyes as he lay on his side in the motel room bed. His dead brother Trevor stood right next to the bed, the pieces of his dismembered body stacked back up together again, the ragged cuts in his skin somehow fused back together, tattered and blood-stained strips of clothing hanging off of his purplish and boated skin which was blackened with rot at the edges of each piece. His brother smiled at him as he stared down at him, leaning over him, the scar of his severed head circling his neck. “Brother,” he whispered. “You need to wake up now …”

Cole snapped awake and jumped up, ready to backpedal across the bed away from the monstrosity that used to be his brother.

But there was no one there beside the bed.

He realized that he’d been dreaming. He looked around at the motel room and saw that he was alone—Stella and David were gone. For a split second he thought they might have gone back down to the vending machines to get some more sodas and snacks, but their coats were gone. Stella’s gun was gone too; their hats and gloves, the cash she’d stuffed down into her socks and coat … all of it was gone.

They’d left him.

Cole jumped to his feet and grabbed his boots and laced them up quickly. He stuffed the packs of cash down into his socks and pushed his pants legs down over them. Then he grabbed his gun and stuffed it down into the waistband of his pants. The other gun was in his coat pocket with more packs of money. He pulled his knit cap down over his head and slipped his hands into his thin leather gloves. He shrugged his coat on and headed for the door.

The hallway was stone quiet and it felt peculiar out here. There was this feeling of evil around him. He didn’t know how else to explain it. It was like a terrible storm was coming, the rumbling of thunder signaling the danger that was approaching, an electric static in the air, the taste of ozone on his tongue like the air itself was alive with energy. A creepy-crawly fear danced on his skin, and his hairs stood up on end, prickling his skin.

Stella and David were in trouble. He wasn’t sure why he was so certain about that, but he was. They had snuck out and now they were in danger.