Authors: Anne C. Petty
Somewhere behind him, a long way off it seemed, someone was calling his name. But his focus was drawn toward the highest wall, where a number of sorcery figures in yellow and dark red, some twice as high as his head, cast their menace over the chamber. Trembling violently on his knees, Ned swung the flashlight upward, revealing their postures of aggression and death. Their colors were so vibrant, even in the minimal light of the flashlight, he felt an overwhelming urge to reach up and touch them.
With bloody, shaking hands, he pushed himself to his feet and stood, swaying.
“I’m here,” he said aloud. “Show me what to do.” His words fell like dry leaves in the dead air.
Turning around, he saw behind him dozens of shallow shelves chipped into the rock wall, each holding a bark coffin with its ends tied in grass twine. Some of the shelves also held implements such as boomerangs, stone axes, and small dilly-bags made of reeds or grass. It began to dawn on Ned that what he was looking at was a mortuary chamber, an Aboriginal burial cave. So Ollie had been right. Even with Ned’s limited knowledge of Aboriginal customs, he knew this would be one of the most forbidden places you could stumble upon.
On a shelf nearest him, the light from his flashlight caught a perfectly chiseled quartz spear point resting on top of a bark coffin. Remembering, he put his hand in his pocket and drew out the quartz ball. It shone gold and white in the flashlight’s beam. At the same moment, he heard a shuffling of heavy feet behind him, and claws scraping on the rocks.
Ned wheeled to find himself face to face with a dingo of monstrous proportion, its eyes red in the torchlight and its yellow fangs bared. A curling tongue slid over its front teeth.
“Helloh, Neddy,” it growled. “You’ve come to see me at lahhst.”
“Who … what are you?” he gasped.
“Blimey,” the creature coughed, “I’ve lived with you all your life, and you don’t know me?”
Ned was shaking from his bloody face to the soles of his feet. “Is … this your true form?”
“One of them,” it huffed. “Many Dingo Clan humahhns have served me well.” It licked its lips with a horrid smack. “When I appeared to them like this, they called me their god, their Ancestor. I found their young boys sent here for initiation most toothsome.”
“The death adder, was that you …” Ned was too shaken to think straight.
The Quinkan make a nerve-shredding attempt at laughter. “I used thahht form especially for you because your Snake Clahhn great-grandmother tried to interfere with me, but as you see, she’s deserted you now, no more protection marks. She had business elsewhere.”
Ned glanced at his arms, confirming what he already knew. The skin pattern had been a protective screen against shamanic magic, which probably explained how he’d managed to stay alive all these years, but now it was gone.
“I was making a nice living here, until your arrogant half-breed fool of a half-wit grandfather invaded this place with his delusions of grandeur. He thought he could hahhrness the powers of creation. A truly wicked, evil man,” it snarled.
“You would know about evil. You killed my father.” Ned barely got the words out.
The Quinkan growled deep in its throat. “He killed himself. I didn’t have to touch him. He was useless, couldn’t do the job I needed from him, but I have some faith in you, Neddy-boy.”
Ned closed his fist around the quartz ball, drawing unexpected courage and comfort from it. Maybe what Ollie had said about it was true, that it really did have some senior man’s Quinkan protection magic in it. At this point, he was ready to believe anything.
“Yer face is a right dog’s breakfahhst,” the devil-dog observed, adopting Ollie’s voice and cocking its head. It took a step toward him.
“What did you want from my father, or from me?” Ned shone the flashlight directly into its eyes, and it took a step back. “I intend to do everything in my power to get rid of you, not help you.”
“But that’s the same thing, innit?” The devil-dingo grinned, showing its teeth. “This is the place where the mistake was done. As Black Hahhrrow’s next of kin, it’s your job to undo it. That’s why you’re still alive, wretch of a humahhn, to undo the magic! Otherwise, I would have just eaten you long ago.”
“But how? I don’t know how!” Ned backed away from the creature’s stench, his stomach churning.
“Use the Dingo Clan tjuringa, fer fuck’s sake!” it yelped. “That’s why you’re here, to fix the mess your stupid ahhncestor made. So whip it out already and cut the cord that keeps me tied to your sorry bloodline.” It gnarred and chewed at its hide in a disgusting manner.
“Then show me where it is, this tjuringa thing, and I’ll try.”
“But that’s the bloody point,” it howled at him. “Hahhrrow spellbound it nobody knows where, sealed with his own blood, hid it away. You’re his blood kin, you met him in the billabong. You didn’t ask him where it was?”
Ned no longer felt the floor under his feet. “I-I didn’t know …”
“Whahht kind of pitiful shahhmann are you? With yer bloody face and another man’s magic there in yer hand? You’re so stupid, you didn’t even bring the tjuringa with you!” It lifted its leg and pissed on a ledge, filling an empty oval-shaped depression in a rock ledge with its urine. “How did you think you could undo Black Harrow’s sorcery without the clan tjuringa he stole?”
“But, I thought the thing was here, that I was supposed to find it and take it to some clan elders. I thought …” Ned said helplessly. It was clear he had misinterpreted the visions, that he had staked everything on the hope that once he found the cave where it all began, he would be shown what to do.
“Curse Black Hahhrrowrowrow and all his brood,” growled the Quinkan, snapping toward Ned. “Figure out how to do the job proper or I swear I’ll eat you anyway!”
A scream cut through the chamber, and Ned saw Suzanne’s head and shoulders emerge from the tunnel entrance. Her face was a mask of terror as she took in the scene.
The Quinkan turned toward her, and a red light blazed in its eyes. It stood up on its hind legs, balancing unsteadily for a moment, then turned toward Suzanne. Its guttural half-human voice froze Ned’s blood. “Shahhll I eat this one, then? I’m soooo hungry!”
“NO!” Ned shouted and threw himself at the Quinkan, sending them both toppling into the black shadows of the cave. Ned kicked and punched for all he was worth as the Quinkan clamped its jaws around his thigh, shredding his flesh to the bone. A quick look at the tunnel showed him that Suzanne had retreated from the entrance.
“I’ll KILL you!” Ned yelled, his mind a red blur. “If I have any guardians at all, I summon them NOW!”
The Quinkan shook Ned by the leg and flung him across the cave. He could feel bones breaking, but he was beyond caring about his own body. His only focus now was to do as much damage to the hated creature as he could manage. He could barely see it coming toward him through the flashlight’s distant beam where it had landed against the painted sorcery wall. But then, a shimmering light that was not battery produced filled the narrow cave. Shining ovoid figures began to emerge from the rock walls, and Ned felt the icy touch of the Rai at his back. Snarling, the Quinkan stopped in its tracks.
We are the Rai. We teach, we guide. The shaman’s path is our purpose. Their words sang in Ned’s mind like cataracts and shrieking winds. Simultaneously, the tallest of the Rai plunged its amoeba-like appendages into Ned’s body, ripping out his heart and lungs and viscera. It took the quartz stone from his hand and thrust it inside his body cavity, sealing the wound. Ned fell to the floor of the cavern, rolling and jerking as if in the throes of a grand mal seizure.
When he sat up, a bright light leaked from the sealed slit in his torso. Getting to his feet, he looked into the red eyes of the Quinkan but felt no fear, only a terrible burning sorrow. His body was numb and held no sensations of pain, and he marveled at the luminosity of his hands as he held them out. To his left, the Rai were faint ripples of light against the chamber wall.
“With my imperfect knowledge, I cannot unbind you,” he said in a monotone to the Quinkan, as it circled him warily, “but I can restrain you until another comes who will learn fully what to do.” Ned stumbled toward the tallest sorcery figure on the wall, his hands outstretched to it, just as the devil-dingo launched itself.
Both fell heavily against the painted wall, and Ned heard Suzanne’s anguished screams mingled with the strangled howls of the Quinkan.
It was the last sound he heard as a mortal man.
Chapter 30
September 8, Thursday—Present Day
Alice sat on her deck swing in shorts and a Hardison Museum T-Rex T-shirt, savoring her next-to-last day of medical leave from the office. Barefoot, her right ankle and foot still wrapped in bandages, she sipped her coffee and contemplated the future.
The day, September 8, was her birthday, but that significance paled in comparison to recent events. She pushed the swing with her good foot, sipped at the cup, and took stock of things. This was the first day since Hal’s death and the destruction of Dunescape that she had not taken the antidepressant prescribed by her doctor. Her head was clear, and she no longer felt guilty for being alive.
This was also Margaret’s first week back at school and the first week of Nik’s fall semester teaching gig at the university, his last before graduation at the end of the year.
She drained her cup. Twelve days since Hal’s death, and she’d been thinking, sitting here on this placid late-summer morning, about a lot of things, some pleasant, and some not. On the pleasant side, Nik and Margaret were taking her to dinner that evening (she’d asked for no useless gifts). She was also relieved to be cleared of suspicion regarding Hal’s sudden death and the destruction of the house. The autopsy confirmed natural causes (a heart attack), and the house fire had been ruled an accident caused by an oil lamp getting knocked over and igniting combustible materials in the upstairs area. She’d received a copy of Hal’s will from his lawyer, and they’d agreed to meet soon. There was a lot of legal business to take care of, but the man assured her when it was all said and done there would be a tidy inheritance.
She thought about Nik. He’d been supportive beyond all expectations, asking few questions and taking up the slack in daily tasks, which included picking Margaret up from school during Alice’s recuperation. Margaret had returned to school with enthusiasm, eager to stay in touch with several friends she’d met at science camp. Now that she was fourteen, she’d begun to change, in a good way. For some reason, she seemed less bratty and more reasonable, which Alice hoped wasn’t just a phase. Margaret had spent a day crying and mourning for Carlisle, but now she seemed over it. About Hal, she’d said nothing.
Alice had wanted to come clean, tell her everything that had really happened in the attic, but she couldn’t bring herself to talk about coming face to face with the Quinkan again, after all this time. In truth, she had been afraid that the mere mention of it might cause the thing to materialize again. But that, too, was changing.
She closed her eyes and pushed the swing, slowing her breathing. Finally, Alice allowed herself to think about Gull Harbor, to see the house in smoking ruins, to see Carlisle cradled in her arms, to see Hal’s body stretched out on his deck chair. She tried regarding all these images dispassionately, as from a distance, seeing each one as a past event from which she was moving away, although a piece of her continued to mourn those two souls, man and dog, in their shared violent death. The greatest milestone in her recovery, the one thing not shared with her therapist, was her willingness to accept the Quinkan for what it was, to analyze it and know that she would survive, not on its terms, but on her own. If anything, she was more determined than ever.
“Hey, fella,” she said, rubbing Dawg’s belly with her foot. He lay sprawled underneath the swing, panting. He licked her toes and pounded the weathered boards of the deck with his tail. A few days ago that simple doggy response would have brought on the tears, but not today. Her mind was focused.
She got up and limped inside, heading with resolve to the small bedroom study. These days most of the available space was covered in books, trays of slides, and research materials related to Nik’s dissertation-in-process. Alice moved around the piles of books and bent down to retrieve Milton Crouch’s folder from the bookcase where she’d shelved it, unable to deal with its contents since the events in Gull Harbor.
Carrying the folder back to the living room, she flopped down on the couch and propped her injured ankle up on a pillow. Then she reread all the documents and made some notes. According to Milton, Patterson Undertakers, who’d handled the charred remains of the late Rev. Harrow, had gone out of business nearly fifty years ago. But now, thanks to Milton’s bloodhound inquisitiveness, she had a lead on the Tanners, who’d made the funeral arrangements. Milton had discovered a Brumlie Tanner listed among the county’s turn-of-the-century property tax rolls, and as this was the only appearance of that last name within the time frame, he’d felt sure it was the family in question.
The original location of the Tanner property, a twelve-acre farmstead, Milton further told her, was described as being about six miles southwest of Magnolia. He’d taken the liberty of trying to find it and had driven down the dusty dirt road shown on the county surveyor’s map for that particular plat. But to his extreme disappointment, the stretch along the road where he expected to see fence posts and farmhouse foundations was instead a fairly new housing development carved out of open pastureland with a few surviving patriarch oaks dotted among the winding paved roads and cul-de-sacs.
But there was one other tantalizing piece of information. In 1915, the property had been sold for nonpayment of taxes, and the buyer had been forced to file for a quitclaim deed since the land was considered abandoned and no relatives of the missing Tanner family could be found. It had changed owners several times since then. Alice sighed. That pretty much ended her chances of finding a remnant of the Tanners, but it still made her wonder who these people could have been who’d taken it on themselves to bury the fiend. She could think of him in no other terms.