The Vanishing (28 page)

Jake would reveal no more about that part. He would only say that he managed to escape and finally find the fort, where they had found him, bloody and sobbing, half out of his mind from what he’d seen and experienced.

Another story Marshall had heard in a bar, and in its quiet way, it was even more disturbing. This one concerned two brothers who had found gold, who had struck it rich up past Helltown and were looking to move on to more productive diggings now that their first claim was running dry. They’d traced a creek backward into the high country via increasingly smaller tributaries, until the water disappeared entirely and there were no more forks to follow. A day of pickaxing had told them all they needed to know about the rocks here, and they decided to try their luck downriver instead of up. Attempting to return the way they’d come, the brothers had gotten lost, and after traipsing around for days through the unfamiliar terrain, sometimes walking in circles, sometimes making progress toward who-knew-where, they happened upon a strange verdant region teeming with oversized plants and trees unlike any they had ever seen that were growing in the shadow of a black mountain. The mountain was the same color as the iron filings that always accompanied panned or sluiced gold, and the brothers decided to scout the area and see if it might yield riches.

But it wasn’t gold they found at the Black Mountain.

It was monsters.

When they finally returned to Helltown, they told of an entire community of horrific creatures that hoarded bones and used them in building homes, that ate the skeletons for sustenance while the rotting carcasses that had housed the bones lay wet and stinking in the heat. Creatures more beast than man, more devil than beast, that had only to look at bushes to make them grow or touch eggs to make them hatch.

There were people there as well, they said, and while some of them were clearly being held captive, others seemed to be collaborators and acted as willing slaves.

Of course, this was a story Marshall heard in a bar, one that had probably been told and retold until there was no truth left in it. But there still seemed to him a reality about it, and he believed every word. California was filling up fast, but there was still a lot of unknown territory, empty spaces and places people knew nothing about, and judging by the long journey out here, many of them probably housed horrors that none of them could even imagine.

Marshall finished his whiskey, debated with himself whether or not to order another, then decided to save his money for tomorrow, when he’d need it. He was drunk enough now for sleep, and he stumbled off his stool and staggered out of the bar. From somewhere came the sound of fiddle music and laughter. From farther away: gunfire. Working hard to remain upright, weaving so badly that he felt dizzy, he headed out of the camp.

He tried to make it back to his cabin, but he must not have succeeded, because when he awoke the sun was up and he was lying in a tent made from animal skins. He heard voices outside, Indian voices, and he emerged from the tent squinting against the sun, his head pounding and his back aching. He attempted to stand straight, but the pain was too much, and he remained hunched over as he made his way through the Indian village. There was a pale face visible among all the dark ones, and Marshall headed toward it.

Doug Lilley, one of the few men from the mill who had not deserted to find his own treasure, was squatting next to a campfire, pushing coals with a stick as he waited for coffee to boil. He looked up as Marshall approached and grinned, revealing a newly missing tooth. ‘‘I was wonderin’ when you was gunna wake up.’’

Marshall squatted down next to him. ‘‘I need some of that,’’ he said.

Lilley cackled. ‘‘I bet you do.’’ He nodded at the Indians. ‘‘You’s lucky they took you in instead a lettin’ the animals have at you where you fell.’’

‘‘I don’t remember,’’ Marshall said.

‘‘They respeck you,’’ Lilley told him. ‘‘Cuz you never took no gold.’’

Marshall snorted. ‘‘People so stupid they respect failure.’’ He shook his head.

‘‘Tha’s not why—’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ Marshall said. ‘‘I know.’’

He glanced over at one of the older men, who nodded solemnly. Two younger men passed by, grinning at him.

He knew their opinion. The Indians believed that the gold was cursed, and though he’d never admit it to another man, Marshall was starting to think it was true. It belonged to a demon, the Indians said, and the demon would punish all who tried to steal its bounty. Sutter and the other men laughed this off as superstition, but Marshall recalled how he had first learned of this gold—

—long before anyone had even entertained the thought that it might exist, and to him the concept of demon treasure made a lot of sense. At least as much sense as anything else.

And it explained the tragedies that were starting to befall some of the miners.

‘‘Y’know,’’ Lilley said. ‘‘I ain’t never believed in God.’’ He dropped his voice. ‘‘But these Indian gods? They scare me.’’

It was as if he could read Marshall’s mind.

‘‘I—’’ Marshall began.

There was a sudden commotion at the entrance to the village. An Indian man moved falteringly into sight, naked, the skin of his chest and legs torn and bloody, half of his scalp gone. He was carrying in his hand the head of a dog, and with each step he wailed loudly in pain and anguish.

Marshall stood, looking over at the older man with whom he’d earlier made eye contact.

‘‘Roo-sha,’’
the Indian said fearfully.

At first he thought the man meant ‘‘Russian,’’ because there were quite a few Russians coming into California from Oregon, but the word was repeated, echoed through the gathering crowd, and Marshall quickly realized that this was another word, an Indian word, and that it meant some sort of monster or demon with which they were all familiar.

No one made any effort to help the man as he lurched farther into the center of the village. In fact, the growing crowd parted before him, as if by touching him they risked death. He seemed to grow weaker and weaker as he walked, and finally he fell to his knees, remaining there for a moment, looking up at his fellow villagers as the blood poured down his face, before he collapsed unmoving in the dirt.

The dog’s head rolled away from him. It was alive, Marshall saw now. Its eyes were blinking, and its broken jaw was moving, trying to work, though no sound emerged from the mouth.

He thought of Pike.

The villagers were talking quickly and quietly among themselves. Whatever was out there, whatever lived in the mountain passes and secret canyons of this land, was known to the Indians, and they feared it. They were probably thinking of ways to appease it.

No one made any effort to help the man who lay bleeding in the dirt.

No one touched the still-moving dog’s head.

Marshall grabbed the arm of a young man walking by. ‘‘What’s happening?’’ he asked. His query was met with a blank stare, so he tried asking again in the Indian’s language. He knew a little of it and managed to make himself understood, but the response he received was a jumble of unconnected nonsensical assertions.

The dying man was unclean because he had been attacked by a demon. If his body was not burned and his ashes scattered within a day, bad luck would befall the village and everyone in it would die. There was a race of demons. They were of the land and had been here long before the people came. They lived in the wilderness, away from man, and they didn’t like humankind. Just as plants grew better in shit and filth, nourished by waste, so too these creatures—

—thrived on death, disease and rot. From this, they brought forth new life.

And yet, they weren’t plants. Nor were they animals. They were demons, magical beings of great power.

And they owned the gold.

Marshall wasn’t sure how much of this he believed. His head was still aching and throbbing from last night, and there were gaps in translation that his mind had filled but could very well be wrong. And yet . . .

And yet none of the contradictions in the Indian’s description seemed contradictory to him. Marshall thought of the flowers that had bloomed overnight in the plain surrounding that hellish hut on the trail. Behind the mysteries of this land, there seemed to him a single truth, and though he did not understand it, he believed in it.

The entire village, it seemed, had gathered around the unmoving body of the man and the head of the dog with its rolling eyes and snapping mouth. Several of the men were chanting something Marshall could not quite make out, and a naked man wearing a large colorful headdress was dancing wildly about, screaming and throwing dirt on the man’s body and the dog’s head.

Doug Lilley spoke in a low, taut voice. ‘‘Les get outta here,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’ like this.’’

Marshall nodded, and the two of them retreated down a trail toward the camp.

‘‘Where you goin’?’’ Lilley asked after they’d gone a ways.

Marshall shrugged. ‘‘Sutter don’t need me back until tomorrow, so I’m a free man.’’

‘‘Me too. Wanna buy me a drink?’’

‘‘We’ll see what happens.’’

They walked along for a while in silence. ‘‘You ever hear of those demons before?’’ Marshall asked finally. ‘‘Ever hear any stories about them from white people?’’

‘‘Oh yeah.’’ Lilley nodded. ‘‘They’re here.’’

Lilley looked up into the hills surrounding them. ‘‘Cain’t tell where they be. But this their land. We just trespass on’t. Least, thas how it use ta be. I guess it’s gettin’ t’be ours now. There’s more of us’n there is of them.’’

‘‘You believe all that horseshit about it being their gold and all? You think they can do magic?’’

Lilley thought for a moment. ‘‘Yeah,’’ he said.

‘‘Did you ever . . . see anything?’’

Lilley nodded.

‘‘What?’’

‘‘You want me t’show you?’’

Marshall was incredulous. ‘‘You know where they are?’’

‘‘Not exackly. But I can show you some’n.’’

‘‘You ever tell Sutter this?’’

‘‘Oh, Sutter knows. He was the one what discovered ’em first.’’

Marshall stopped walking.

‘‘Oh yeah. Afore you came, afore most a these men started a comin’, this place was difernt. Ever wonder why there ain’t more women at the fort? There was. Squaws and Mexicans, sure, but some of the men brought their own wives. Or daughters.’’ He gestured toward the river, visible through the trees and, by implication, the fort beyond. ‘‘Where are they, huh? Where you think they are?’’

‘‘I don’t know,’’ Marshall admitted.

‘‘Sutter sent them away. Because they
consorted.
’’

Marshall shook his head. ‘‘I don’t understand. What does that mean?’’

‘‘I’ll show you. Up at First Camp.’’

‘‘First Camp? I was just there last week.’’

‘‘You’re Sutter’s man. They would’n tell you.’’

‘‘Then why should you?’’

‘‘The Indians think you’re safe.’’

‘‘Because I have no gold.’’

Doug Lilley shrugged and smiled, revealing missing teeth.

Marshall’s horse was back at the cabin. Lilley had lost his in a card game, so Marshall lent him a mule, and the two of them took the trail east toward First Camp. It was midafternoon and they could smell the smoke from the camp and hear the sounds of shouting men and falling rocks when Lilley hopped off the mule to get his bearings. He walked around in a circle, then pointed through the ponderosas to their right. ‘‘This way,’’ he said. ‘‘An’ if we don’ find a box canyon soon, we turn back.’’

Sure enough, the ground rose before them, and they rode between two ridges into a narrow gorge that opened out to reveal a small community of tents and windowless shacks situated around a large pond fed by what appeared to be a seasonal waterfall. ‘‘Ho!’’ Lilley called. His voice echoed off the rock walls, bounced back, but no one came out to greet them, and Marshall realized that as new as the tents and shacks looked, the community had turned ghost.

He didn’t like that.

‘‘Where is everyone?’’ Marshall asked.

He was hoping Lilley would say they were off working a vein or a Long Tom or even blasting a hillside—his own pet peeve in these gold-fevered days—but the other man shook his head. ‘‘Don’t know. I can guess, though.’’

‘‘What—’’

‘‘This way,’’ Lilley said. ‘‘Come.’’

They got off their mounts and walked around the edge of the pond to the first shack, ducking under the low sill of the doorway to get inside. It took their eyes a moment to adjust, and in that moment Marshall was brought back to the mud hut on the plain. Now, as then, he found himself in a single windowless room, and his body was filled with tension, his mind with unease.

Now he could see.

The dead woman lay on a pile of leaves against the back wall. The child, if that’s what it was, crawled blind through the dirt, mewling like a kitten, its segmented body moving in staggered stages, at opposing angles. There was no face that he recognized, only a blank section of skin above an open gash of a mouth, all of it surrounded by a lion’s mane of coarse black hair.

‘‘They was all afraid of it,’’ Lilley said, and his voice was quiet, soft, almost reverent. ‘‘Last time I come.’’ He looked at the body of the woman. It was black with rot but for some reason did not smell. The only thing visible in the darkness of her face was the whiteness of teeth. ‘‘She was one of ’em what
consorted
, and this come of it.

She died givin’ birth.’’ He pointed to the . . . child crawling awkwardly about the dirt. ‘‘They was all afraid t’ touch it. Even th’ midwife what help her. They jus’ lef’ it here, hopin’ it’d die. But it dint. Now, I guess, they’s all gone.’’

Marshall had been thinking the same thing. Why
hadn’t
it died? How had it survived? Apparently, it just spent all day and night crawling around this single-room shack. What did it eat? He glanced over at the mother, trying to determine whether any bites had been taken out of her, but the skin of the body was so black and rotted it was impossible to tell. Maybe it didn’t
have
to eat, he thought.