Jumlin's Spawn (7 page)

The minute it bared pearly white fangs, all
resemblance to a child vanished. It emitted a harmonic high-pitched
growling sound that hurt her ears.

She stood so fast she had to grab for a cave wall.
She took a step back from the thing she had seen, and the two
others just like it standing beside it.

The taller one lunged first. Jumping away, Elfie fell
backward. The smallest one toddled forward, its mouth opening,
poised to strike.

A blast of light pierced the cave.

The light beam struck each one of the screaming
creatures, pulverizing them one by one into rubble and ash.

The light beam emanated from a flashlight. It blinked
out. Severin’s face appeared, just visible in the shallow
daylight.

“You okay?” he asked, tucking his flashlight into his
belt.

Elfie felt the cloudy stampede of her heart slow down
a little. She swallowed, coughed, and nodded. “Yeah, I guess.” She
looked around at the shattered remains of three creatures. “Is that
the…pack of roving dogs you were talking about?”

Severin walked up with a bag of flora. He scooped out
a handful and began to encircle each rubble mound. “They’re what I
was talking about, yeah.”

She knew her eyes must look terrified, if they looked
anything like she felt. She turned them up toward Severin for
answers. “What were they?”

“Beats me,” Severin said. “Don't know what they are.
I only know what they do.”

“I thought the theory was they only come out at
night,” Elfie said.

“No, these things pretty much bring the darkness with
them.” Severin extended a hand to help her up. “Can you stand?”

Elfie nodded. She stood up by herself, slapping the
dust from her slacks. “Thank you. I mean, really. They would have
killed me if you hadn't come in.”

“No, like I said, they keep the young women. The
elderly they kill for blood and flesh. The young men they make into
one of them. The child-bearing age women are hoarded for breeding
purposes. By the time they got to you, though, I expect you would
have wished you were dead.”

The outside sound of running footsteps slowed, and
Yancey and Oliver, gasping for air, swung themselves headlong into
the cave.

“Are you all right?” Oliver asked in one gasp.

“I'm fine,” Elfie said. “Thanks to Severin here. If
he hadn’t happened upon me, I’d be in deep kimchee.”

“I didn’t just happen upon you,” Severin said. “I was
sent to find you. All of you.” He moved his attention to Yancey.
“Grandmother needs to see you. The three of you.”

“Molly?” Yancey asked. “Why?”

Severin bobbed his head sideways with uncertainty.
“She says you have the people’s business.”

Yancey nodded toward Elfie. “Yeah. We have a mission
or two to accomplish at the Angel Caves.”

“The Angel Caves. Then it's true what I heard.”

Yancey's eyes opened wide. “How could you hear
anything out here?”

Severin cocked his head back and shot off a loud
laugh. “The trees knew. The Cottonwoods. They told me.”

“Bullshit. Molly told you,” Yancey said, grinning,
“and Molly knows everything.”

“Just about.” Severin turned toward Elfie and pointed
north. “Molly Coddle lives by the springs, in the Willow Peak,
above the Wash. Yancey knows the way. It’s important that she sees
you soon.”

Elfie's brow furrowed more than ever. “Why?”

“That’s for her to tell you. So be careful,” he said,
walking toward the mouth of the grotto as he left.

Yancey walked to Elfie’s side and touched a hand to a
track of dirt on her face. His thumb whisked it away. “You look no
worse for the wear.”

Oliver had knelt beside the three piles of rubble and
fine blue powder. He unclipped his flashlight from his belt and
shined the light across the debris mounds.

Elfie walked to a big U-shaped rock in the grotto's
base and sat down. “I don't know what the hell just happened,” she
said. She nodded toward the rubble. “I think we have an answer to
the consecrated cremains. Severin puts the dried flowers around
them.”

Yancey considered the mounds Oliver examined. “Did he
bring these cremains here?”

Elfie inhaled deeply. She covered her face with her
hands. “Hell, to the fucking no, he didn’t. Not that you’ll believe
it…hell, I don't even know if I believe it. But, I think I saw what
Oliver swerved the jeep to avoid hitting.”

“The kid?” Oliver asked.

“Oh, yeah. Three of them. They look like children
but, believe me, they're not. Severin shined a light on them and
they disintegrated. Right in front of me.”

“Severin’s a wily Indian guy. He seems to like you.
Maybe he played a trick on you,” Yancey said.

“He saved my life. It wasn’t a trick. They were real,
damn it, I saw them!”

“Something like that can't exist, okay?” Yancey said.
“I mean, barring mad scientists building evil robots, you had to
have hallucinated it or dreamed it or imagined you saw something
when you didn't.”

“I know what I saw!”

“The question is not what you saw,” Oliver said, “but
how you interpret what you see, in the words of Isaac Asimov.”

“Ah, because Isaac Asimov knows how to interpret what
I see better than I do?” Elfie asked. “So you think you guys are
the only ones who see correctly?”

“No. But I’m a skeptic,” Yancey said. “And that’s the
difference.”

“I’m a scientist, I‘m a skeptic, too,” Elfie snapped
back.  “I saw it and you didn’t.  That’s the only
difference. You have the luxury of disbelief. I saw one last night,
and today I saw three of them. Whatever they are, I have no doubt
they exist.”

Yancey's face darkened. He shook his head to himself
and at the others. “Elf, last night, you said you saw a dog.”

“I was wrong. Last night, I saw it in moonlight after
a huge fight with you two. Today, I saw three of them dead-on. They
were not dogs. They’re nothing I would ever want to have for a
pet.”

“Elfie, Yancey,” Oliver said, walking between them.
“Why don't we go back to the campsite and discuss this on home
territory?”

Elfie sighed. “That's a good idea,” she said, as she
reached into her tools and pulled free a sample bag and a scoop.
She reached down to quickly sample some of the cremains then slip
them into the sample bag. She sealed it and then poked the bag and
scoop away with her tools. “Come on. Let's get the hell out of
here.”

****

They ended up sitting in the jeep again. The bunks
had been righted again into bench seats. Elfie claimed one and
leaned back into it. “Whatever they are, they are real, Yancey. I'm
telling you what I saw. Don't you trust me?”

Yancey dropped himself back against the rear bench.
“Yes, of course I trust you. I believe you saw something. What it
was, I don't know, but you saw something.”

“Well, that's something at least,” Elfie said. “I
think whatever was in there is linked to the dead buffalo. I saw
one of these creatures just before the animal distress sound. And
three of them were in the cave with the carcass. Whatever this
thing is may be some of the answer to whatever is going on around
here.”

Oliver added, “Elfie is right. This woman Severin
talked about, Molly. Who is she?”

“Molly Coddle,” Yancey explained, “a medicine woman,
a nice lady, but more than a little crazy. She’ll make something
out of nothing.”

“Maybe she can make some sense from what’s going on,”
Oliver said.

“I don’t know what happened here with Elf, but what’s
going on is simple,” Yancey said. “A bunch of grave robbers were
working with Duryea to make black market money in stolen Indian
artifacts. They probably killed Duryea so they wouldn’t have to
split the loot with a white guy. The buffalo thing is just a
coincidence.”

Elfie said, “Narvel held there was a legend of blood
theft by creatures, the ones he wrote about in his Lakota Book of
the Dead – ”

“You said yourself it was crap!” Yancey snapped.

“I know, I know,” she replied. “And, if I hadn't seen
what I just saw, I'd still think so, believe me. I wish I could go
back and not see it. But, I can't. The way I look at the world will
never be the same again. Now, don't you have enough doubt about
your own knowledge or sufficient trust in me to consider you might
be wrong about this? That there might be something here? Just
maybe?”

“I trust you, you know that,” Yancey said, “and if
you two want to go, I'm there with you. Molly's place is on our way
to the Angel Caves. It's as good as any place to stop for the
night.”

A sudden clap of thunder split their conversation
apart. A drizzle of rain ensued.

“Where the hell did that come from?” Oliver asked,
squinting through the jeep window and up into the sky. “I’d say
it's awfully early for a flash summer storm.”

“Just what we needed…stuff to make our job harder,”
Yancey said.

“We'd better get a move on,” Oliver replied, stepping
over the seat bridge to slip into the driver's seat. “I’m driving,
so where do we go?”

“Head 48 kilometers toward 0 degrees on the compass,”
Yancey said, climbing into the passenger side.

“Translation please,” Oliver replied.

Yancey pointed due north. “Molly's place is about 30
miles that way.”

The road narrowed, steep and long, but their jeep
made it…just. It navigated the split crannies through crags and the
larger cavern walls. Yancey pointed out a rugged wall beneath an
outcropping of boulders. Elfie had thought it another rock
face.

“This is it, Willow Peak,” Yancey said. “You can park
right here.”

It was not Elfie's imagination. The moment they left
the jeep, she saw that the stormy sky had taken on the warm honey
light of a Rembrandt painting. She could sense energy wash across
her skin, her hair standing on end. Static electricity from the
storm, she concluded. Only more. Much more.

The tan rock wall gate had obviously been constructed
to blend in with the landscape. Beyond the gate lay a group of
three natural springs surrounded by cement, to look like three
bubbling water pools with steam rising off them. The largest one
was fed by a ground tapped aquifer that looked like a waterfall
spilling over arranged rocks. Artificial masonry upon the mountain.
Landscaping by Palmer & Sons
, a little sign read.

As Yancey pushed open the gate, Elfie could see the
next rising hill beyond it, otherwise hidden by the slant of the
road. Seven apertures appeared atop the hill's apex. Elfie could
see silent lightning glancing off the caves. Even in the afternoon
light, the caves looked like glowing portals. Wanagi Yata, the
Lakota called them. The Angel Caves.

To the left, a path sloped to a walled rock garden.
Great floating jewels of blown glass had been dangled from unseen
wires hung on trees. The house beyond it was a standard middle-aged
double-wide mobile home.

A blast of flame jetted through the gape of the gate
around the spring pools. Carrying the flame was a woman who quickly
shutdown the blow torch. She also toted through the gate two big,
misshapen glass objects.

The old woman’s brownish face wore an incongruous map
of freckles, her stark gray eyes lit up by the sun.  She could
have been anywhere from an old 50 to a young 70. Her black hair had
been brushed into two pigtails. Elfie remembered Yancey saying to
her many times that there were only enough living full-blood
Indians to fill a 747, and he was one of them. Everyone else had
mixed ethnicity. Apparently, even medicine women.

“Ho, Yancey,” Molly said.

“Hi, Molly,” he replied. “Severin tells me you wanted
to see us about something. This is Oliver, and Elfie. I think you
may remember them.”

“Yeah, I do, heya,” she said, limping toward a huge,
thick metal barrel. She placed the glass pieces she carried into
the barrel. “I knew I had that damn glass flame too high. I lost a
lot of chances.” She aimed her blowtorch at the barrel of glass and
fired it inside it. “Gotta send these back to their source. This
will soften them. I can kiln them later.”

Elfie gazed at the many glass objects of art she now
recognized, artfully placed throughout the springs area. Concrete
furniture inhabited the area. The concrete wore the same subtle
harmony of color palate. A blown-glass golden orb sat in the middle
of the table.

“Did you make all of this glass work?” Elfie asked.
“They're beautiful.”

“Yeah, all of them,” Molly said, laying the blowtorch
beside the burning glass barrel. “I guess it started as an art, and
then it was a business, now it's just a habit. Can I get you kids
some hot tea? Or coffee?”

All three of them shook their heads.

“We’ve come a long way,” Yancey said, “I think we’d
just like to hear what you wanted to see us about.”

Molly nodded. “Well, you'd best be seated because
it's a long story.”

When they were seated, Molly grew quiet and, after a
moment, finally spoke in what sounded like carefully-calibrated
words. “I hear you are going to the Angel Caves. Do you know
why?”

An odd way to phrase the question, Elfie thought to
herself. But she answered. “I have the Angel Caves antiquities that
were stolen by the late Professor Duryea. I need to return
them.”

“You have them?” Molly asked, her mouth opening
wide.

“Yes, I worked with Duryea. I've brought them back
with me. They're in the jeep.”

“To think I had no hope,” she said softly. “I
believed we were resigned to fighting this alone. But providence
prevailed. And you’ve come here after all.”

“Excuse me?” Elfie asked. “I don’t follow you.”

Molly laughed to herself a little. “It means I was
right. It means you…the three of you…are the Wakinyan.”

Elfie looked over at Yancey. “What is that?”

“Well, the word means
thunder
and
lightning
and stuff in Lakota,” Yancey explained to his
friends. “I don’t know what it means in this instance.”