The Graves of Plague Canyon (The Downwinders Book 3) (7 page)

“I thought pioneer women were made of heartier stock than
that,” Deem replied, finishing up her meal. “At least, the stories in Sunday
School made them sound a lot tougher.”

“Oh, we were tough, but we still lost our balance when a
handsome boy came around. We all dreamed of being the first wife to a handsome
young man. Well, most of us, anyway. I suppose there were a few like you who
made it much harder for a man to conquer. They usually wound up as wife seven
or eight.”

“I don’t think Warren is a polygamist,” Deem replied.
“Although he never told me why he doesn’t wear garments anymore. Just that he
doesn’t.”

“Well, if you are interested in him, there’s some secrets
you’ll both have to share with each other, down the road,” Carma said. “
If
you’re interested.”

“He asked me out to dinner again,” Deem replied. “I said
yes.”

“I take that as a yes, you’re interested,” Carma said.
“Unless you’re leading him on for some other reason.”

“Well, he might come in handy at some point,” Deem said, “but
no, I’m not leading him on. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Good for you, my dear,” Carma said. She reached into a
pocket on her dress and removed a small square foil, then placed it on the
table and pushed it toward Deem. “Here you go, with my best wishes.”

Deem looked at the item on the table — it was a condom.

“Carma, I’m nowhere near that point,” she said, looking down
at the condom with surprise.

“You’re a pretty young girl, and he’s a return missionary who
doesn’t wear garments,” Carma said. “It’s likely to get out of hand before you
can do anything to stop it. Tuck it away and you’ll thank me later.”

Winn walked into the room. “I’ve got something!”

Deem reached out and quickly grabbed the condom from the
table, sliding it down and into her lap.

Winn paused. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Deem said.

“You did not ask to be excused from the table, young man,”
Carma said.

“Oh, I apologize Carma, I completely forgot,” Winn replied.
“But I’ve got some info. There’s no A. Free in Washington anymore, but there is
a John Free. A man named Aldus Free used to live in the same house, so I’m
thinking John might be his son. I say we go pay him a visit.”

“May I be excused, Carma?” Deem asked.

“Of course, my dear. And thank you.”

▪ ▪ ▪

 “Once or twice a year, someone shows up wanting to talk to
my dad,” John said, standing in the doorway of his single level ranch style
home in Washington City.

“He used to live here?” Winn asked.

“Yes, until we had to move him into an assisted care
facility. Are you both… you know?”

“You know?” Deem repeated.

John looked over his shoulder, back into the house, and then
stepped out to the front porch next to Deem and Winn, pulling the door closed
behind him.

“You know, like my dad… was…” John said.

“Was?” Winn asked.

“Listen, my sister insists that my dad had some skills, back
in the day, you know, and that we were supposed to inherit those skills, but
nothing has ever come of it. I wouldn’t believe her if people didn’t keep
showing up here asking to see him. He was a janitor at Dixie Academy for
heaven’s sake; why would people who didn’t know him keep showing up, wanting to
talk to him?”

“But we did know him,” Winn lied.

“I highly doubt that,” John replied, looking them over.
“You’re not even half my age.”

“I think your father has some geographical knowledge of an
area I’ve been exploring,” Deem said, “and I wanted to talk to him about it.”

“Ah, you saw a sign, did you?” John asked. “It’s always a
sign. Listen, you’ll never get in to see my father. The facility doesn’t allow
guests from off the street. You have to be on an approved list. And I’ll put
your name on that list, and let you go see him, if you do something for me.”

“What?” Winn asked.

“Come with me,” John said, opening the door to his house and
walking inside. Deem and Winn followed.

The living room was trashed and the dining room beyond looked
even more out of control. A woman’s head appeared from around a corner.

“Who are these people?” the woman asked.

“Shut up and finish dinner!” John barked back, following a
rabbit trail through the trash on the floor to a hallway, and taking them down
to the last room. They snaked past stacks of boxes and piles of clothes.

“We’re still going through my father’s things,” John said as
they entered the back room. It was similarly trashed. John walked to a dresser
and pulled a drawer open. It didn’t contain what he was looking for, so he
pulled open another drawer and kept searching. On the third drawer, he removed
a small wooden box in the shape of a cube, about six inches square. “Ah!” he
said, holding the box out to Winn. “Tell me what this is, and how to work it.
Then I’ll get you in to see my father.”

Winn slid open a wooden slat at the top of the box and looked
inside, then he showed it to Deem. Inside was a thin, flat stone, with eight
edges that had been cut into it, not much larger than a quarter.

“It’s a rock,” Deem said.

“I know it’s a rock,” John said. “But it’s more than that. My
sister believes it’s something my dad kept in that box for a reason. She thinks
it can do things.”

“Like what?” Winn asked.

“That’s what I want you to tell me!” John said. “If you’re
here about one of my father’s signs, then you’re like him. Like he used to be.
He doesn’t remember what this is anymore. Half the time he can barely remember
his name. My sister thinks it might be something special, that it might be
worth something.”

Deem saw Winn looking down into the box, staring at the stone
inside. She knew he had entered the River, so she joined him. The surface of
the rock transformed from a dull grey to a shiny glass, reflecting the light of
the room out of the box.

Do you have any idea what it is?
she thought to Winn.

No idea,
he replied.

What do we tell him?
she asked.

We make up some bullshit.

We gotta do it in a way where he’ll get us in to see Aldus,
Deem replied.
I’ve got an idea.

Go for it,
Winn said.
I’ll back you up.

They dropped out of the River, and John looked expectantly at
the two of them.

“You just zapped it with your skills, didn’t you?” John
asked. “Just now. You both used your abilities to zap it and see what it could
do.”

“I think it might be very valuable,” Deem said. “What do you
think, Winn?”

“There’s a chance it’s incredibly valuable,” Winn replied.

John punched the air with his fist in a sort of victory
salute, and made a whoop. “Yes! I knew it!”

“I know a place that can appraise it,” Deem said. “They might
even want to buy it off you.”

“Where?” John asked excitedly.

“It’s a secret establishment up in Cedar City,” Deem said.
“They’d never allow you in, but they’d let us in. I’ll get it appraised for you
if you let us see your father.”

“You get it appraised first, then you can see him,” John
replied.

Winn had reached into the box and was holding the rock
between his fingers, examining it. “Yeah, might be worth a ton. It’s got a
special aura around it.”

“Really?” John asked.

“It’ll take a week to get an appointment with the appraiser,”
Deem said, “but we’re on a tighter timetable than that. We need to talk to your
father by tomorrow, or it’ll be too late, and it won’t matter anymore. You get
us in to see him tomorrow, and we’ll get this appraised by next week.”

John seemed to be mulling the offer over. “How do I know
you’ll keep your promise?”

“You want some collateral?” Winn asked. “How about fifty
bucks?”

“Hell no,” John replied. “That thing might be worth
thousands!”

“Or it might be worth nothing,” Deem said. “We won’t know
until the appraisal is done.”

“Nah, fifty bucks ain’t gonna cut it,” John said. “I want
something that’ll convince me you two are gonna follow through.”

“Like what?” Deem asked.

“Ten thousand,” John replied.

Winn scoffed out loud and dropped the stone back into the
box.

“Neither of us has that kind of money!” Deem said. “Be
reasonable!”

“Give me something of value I can hold onto,” John said. “A
car title, or some jewelry. Something important so I know you’ll come back.”

“My title is in Moapa,” Winn said.

Deem looked sick as she removed a necklace from around her
neck. She carefully dropped it into one hand.

“We bring back the stone with the appraisal, you give me this
back,” Deem said, handing the necklace over to John. “My father gave it to me
before he died, so it has huge sentimental value to me.” A small tear formed in
her left eye, and Winn saw it streak down her cheek.

John saw the tear too and took the necklace to look at it.
The small diamond at the bottom caught the light in the room and triggered
something bird-like in his brain. “Tell you what,” he said. “Take the rock out
of the box, and we’ll put the necklace in its place. Then I’ll hide the box.”

“You better hide it well,” Winn said, removing the stone and
handing it to Deem. “If anyone finds it and hawks it before we come back, not
only will we keep the rock, I’ll burn down your house.”

“It’ll be here,” John said. “I promise!”

He tucked the box back into the drawer, then they all left
the bedroom.

“What are ya’all doin’ back in there?” the woman shouted from
the kitchen.

“Shut up, Daneen!” John hollered back. He ushered them both
to the front door.

“Which facility is your father at?” Deem asked as she stepped
out.

“Tonaquint,” John replied.

Winn stepped down to the porch, then turned back to John in
the doorway. “Tonaquint? That’s a cemetery, not an assisted care facility.”

“That’s where you’ll find him,” John said, smirking at them.
“He’s been there ten years. My sister says you types can still talk to him. If
you do, please tell him we’re still sorting through all his shit.”

John shut the door.

“Motherfucker!” Winn said. “He lied to us!”

“Well, we’re even then, because we lied to him,” Deem said,
turning to walk away from the house and back to Winn’s Jeep. Winn followed.

“Yeah, that shit about the appraisal was a pretty good one,” Winn
asked.

“And the necklace,” Deem said. “I picked it up at JCPenney
for fifteen dollars.”

Winn stopped walking, dumbfounded. “Wow, you had me convinced
your dad gave it to you. You could get a job acting, you know.”

“If you think I’d give that scuzzball a necklace my dad gave
to me, I’m insulted.” She climbed into Winn’s Jeep, and Winn ran around to the
driver’s side to join her.

“It’s so flat and open here,” Deem said as they walked
through the dark. “There’s nowhere to hide!”

It was just after midnight, and Winn and Deem were hoofing it
into the cemetery, Winn’s Jeep parked far from the entrance so as to not catch
the interest of the local police. Deem had mapped out the location of the
grave, and every few steps Winn would carefully turn on a flashlight so they
could check the tombstones and see where they were at.

Many of the grave markers were flush to the ground, and since
Tonaquint was a relatively new cemetery, much of the landscaping hadn’t yet
filled in. The trees were still small and sparse, and there were no bushes to
speak of. An occasional tombstone seemed like the only cover they had — that,
and the dark itself.

Winn turned on the flashlight again to check where they were
at, and Deem was shocked by the images of three children, frozen, one flying
through the air above her. Their expressions were vacant and they looked eerie
— their faces oddly shaped, their poses bizarre.

“It’s just a statue,” Winn said.

“Creepy fucking statue,” Deem replied.

“Come on,” Winn said, clicking the flashlight off. They
continued searching for a few more minutes until Deem came upon the correct
grave. Winn relit the flashlight and held it low to the ground.

 “‘Aldus Free, Beloved Husband and Father,’” Deem read. “He
died in 2004.”

“I think our best option is to lie flat and minimize
movement,” Winn said. “The main driveway in is blocked off, and I think that
any cop car driving out there on the main road is unlikely to see us if we stay
flat on the ground and don’t move.”

They arranged themselves next to the grave. Deem felt the
cold of the grass against her back; it felt good in the eighty degree evening.

“You learned how to trance yet?” Winn asked.

“You know I haven’t,” Deem said.

“You really need to get that under your belt.”

“My dad talked about it before he passed, but we never got
around to it. I just always relied on his trances.”

“Well, you know I don’t mind you relying on mine,” Winn
replied, “but you’ve got to get it down, for those times when I’m not around.
Want to try now?”

“No. I’d rather learn it when we’re not hiding out in a
cemetery.”

“Alright,” Winn replied. “I’ll start.”

They both dropped into the River and Winn began a trance, a
state that would take him deeper than the River, a state where direct
communication with the dead was easier. Deem watched for several minutes as
Winn concentrated, and eventually she saw a kind of bubble form around him. His
eyes opened and he extended his hand, making the bubble open temporarily. She
took his hand, and entered the trance he’d constructed.

Aldus?
Winn called.
Aldus Free?

The ghost rose from the soft grass, his features slowly
becoming visible. He looked very old, but his eyes were wide open, showing lots
of white around the pupils, and his hair was hanging around the sides of his
head, as though he hadn’t cut it in years.

Once his entire personage had risen from the grave, he hung
in the air above it, looking down at his two visitors.

Go out right now and erect a sign somewhere,
Aldus said.
Leave a message for
gifteds on it. You’ll have visitors from now ’til kingdom come.

We almost didn’t see it,
Winn said.
The mark you put on the sign has become
archaic. We were lucky to figure it out.

Ah, that would explain the drop off,
Aldus replied.
That, and the
obscure locations. I still have some signs out there that no one has ever come
to see me about, can you imagine? So many places left undiscovered by most. I
was a lucky chap, I’ll tell you that. I got to see a lot of them before I
kicked. Left the same sign at all of them, a warning sign so the owners
wouldn’t think to take it down. But the same message on the back of all of
them.

You’re not in Washington anymore,
Deem said.
And your son isn’t
exactly helpful when it comes to telling people where you are now.

That’s probably part of the drop off, too,
Aldus mused.
He’s quite useless
you know, him and his sister. I thought she might have the gift, but it didn’t
work out. She’s got maybe ten percent of what she should have. It’s the damn
radiation. It fried my DNA, stole the gift from my kids. I lost half of my
abilities when the tests began. Lots of us did. It ruined my career in the
River, really. Nothing was the same after that. I never really discovered much
after that damned fallout. But hey, before that, I was masterful.

The sign I found was at Plague Canyon,
Deem said.
I’m hoping you know enough
about it to help us out.

Plague Canyon?
Aldus asked.
Never heard of it.

It’s on Hinton’s land,
Deem replied,
southwest of Hurricane, just over the Utah/Arizona
border. Near Joe Blake hill.

You must mean Hinton’s canyon,
Aldus replied.
That’s what it was
called when I mapped it. 1937, if I remember right. One of my earlier
discoveries.

He changed the name of it?
Deem asked.

Must have,
Aldus replied.
Oh, that’s right — I remember now. Owners
changed the name in the forties, to scare people away. Rumors started to spread
about the place, and old Hinton locked it down, didn’t want anyone going in. Renamed
it Plague Canyon to make people think twice about setting foot in there. Now
most people don’t even remember it.

What can you tell us about the place?
Deem asked.

I remember it’s hard to get to. There are cliff dwellings,
like Mesa Verde. High up steep cliffs, a difficult climb. But amazing once you
get there. Simply stunning. Why they built their homes in such a difficult
place is a mystery.

We were hoping to find some callum,
Deem said,
and we’ve heard it’s
there.

Ah, callum, you’re not out for a nature hike, are you?

Trying to help a sick friend,
Deem replied.

Well, that’s better than grave robbing,
Aldus replied,
though anyone
would be ill advised to touch the graves there.

There are graves?
Winn asked.
Zombighosts, then?

Let’s backtrack for just a moment,
Aldus said.
One of the things
that makes Hinton’s canyon so interesting is that the cliff dwellings built
into the side of the canyon connected to a cave system. Rather unusual. Nothing
as extensive as Lechuguilla, but big enough to extend the daily routines of the
natives significantly deeper into the mountain. The callum is growing on
massive gypsum chandeliers that descend from a ceiling in the third chamber
from the entrance. The second chamber has an earthen floor, and is a
necropolis. The natives used that chamber to bury their dead. There are
hundreds of graves.

Shit,
Winn said under his breath.
Zombighosts. We’ll never make it through.

Hold on, young man,
Aldus said.
When I mapped out the place in the thirties,
the ghosts there were fairly benign.

But the radiation would have changed all that,
Winn replied.

Yes, and radiation did reach that canyon, most definitely,
Aldus said.
And the ghosts there
were impacted by it. But I also heard that the callum has an effect on them.
Winds from deep within the cave system blow small amounts of callum into the
necropolis, and it’s had a calming effect on the ghosts. They’re quieter,
slower to rise. I’ve heard they can even be talked to, if it’s done with a
whisper. Loud sounds awaken them, and then they’re dangerous. You can make it
through to the gypsum chandeliers if you’re very quiet and careful.

Do you know how callum is collected?
Deem asked.
I’ve never worked
with it before.

The most common way is with a vacuum box,
Aldus replied.
You would attach
one to the gypsum, and let it sit for an hour or two. When you remove it, it’ll
be full of callum, if it’s a small box. If it’s a large one it might take more
time, like half a day.

Could we just leave the box at the entrance to the cave?
Winn asked.
If there are winds
blowing the callum out, would the box collect it at the entrance?

I expect so, but it would be pretty dispersed at that point.
You’d probably have to leave it there for months for it to collect enough to
matter.

Any idea where we could get a vacuum box?
Deem asked.
I’ve never heard of
it before.

I used to have several,
Aldus said.
But I sold them all before I died.
Didn’t see any sense in leaving them for John or Lydia.

Your son asked us to have a stone appraised,
Winn said.
It was kept in a small
wooden box. He thinks it’s valuable, wants to make some money off it.

Typical,
Aldus replied.

Any idea what it does?
Deem asked.

Oh, I had several stones like that,
Aldus replied.
I picked them up
in my wanderings. Most of them were explosives, but some were different, had
different qualities, like translation, or reflection, or sleep aid.

Sleep aid?
Winn asked.

Yes,
Aldus said.
Made it easier for you to fall asleep.

This one looked shiny when you viewed it in the River,
Deem said.
Any idea about that
one?

Most of them turned shiny in the River,
Aldus replied.
Could be anything.

Well then, how would you know how to use them?
Winn asked.

I had them sorted,
Aldus answered.
I thought I sold them all, too. John must
have found a stray one I missed.

I have it in my pocket,
Deem said.
Would it help if you could see it?

It would have before the fallout,
Aldus replied.
Everything changed
for me when the testing started. My powers would come and go. After several
years of it, I lost my ability to figure out objects altogether. So no, I’m
afraid I wouldn’t be any help in that regard. But I’d advise you to keep it
rather than give it back to my son. Any money he makes from it will go into
some stupid multi-level marketing investment, and I detest that stuff.

Alright,
Winn said, feeling his strength starting to ebb.
Anything else we
should know about Plague Canyon?

Well, don’t go in at night,
Aldus said.
Aside from the ghosts in the
necropolis, there’s ghosts in the dwellings themselves, and they’re active only
at night. They’ve had less callum, so they’re more likely to be regular
zombighosts.

We have to go in at night,
Deem said.
People patrol the place during the day.

You’ll have to figure something out,
Aldus said.
You’ll be torn to
shreds if you go into those cave dwellings at night.

Alright,
Winn said.
Anything else?

The cave goes deeper, past the gypsum chandeliers,
Aldus said.
You’ll be tempted to
explore while you’re waiting for the callum to collect. You can, but keep in
mind it’s easy to get lost in there.  Lots of twists and turns, and a couple of
drop offs. There’s a passageway that has been covered over by rocks, and you’ll
find all kinds of native totems and trinkets on it. Don’t touch it, and for
god’s sake don’t remove any of the rocks.

Why?
Deem asked.

The rocks and amulets are there for a reason,
Aldus said sternly.
Things have
been trapped behind there. If you move the rocks, you could release them.

Things?
Winn asked.

Yes, things,
Aldus said.
Evil things. Or so Shipewe told me.

Who’s Shipewe?
Winn asked.

A leader of the Anasazi, buried at the necropolis,
Aldus replied.
When I talked to
him years ago, in the thirties, he was easy to communicate with, but I wouldn’t
go trying to rouse him now. These days you can’t make any noise in that chamber
if you want to get out alive.