Jumlin's Spawn Read online

  “Who is he?” Elfie asked.

  “A gigantic waste of time, that's who he is,” Yancey explained. “I have to see him, to appease the more conservative traditionalists, before we go into their holy lands.”

  “I need to reserve a portable argon laser for the field,” Elfie said.

  “You mean like the one you used on the Dani artifacts I wanted tested?” Oliver asked. “We still have that one at the university. I can call Pat in equipment assignments and have it delivered to the field.”

  “Terrific. We'll need a field generator, too,” she said.

  “I’ve got it covered,” Oliver said.

  “What the hell,” Yancey asked, looking to Elfie for an answer, “is a portable argon laser?”

  “Well, you know what a laser does?” Elfie replied. “An argon laser uses gases to create white light. This laser uses light to sanitize field tools. I don't want any of what might be growing in Doctor Narvel Caligari's cabinet to take root in the grasslands. He's already done enough damage to your people.”

  Yancey reached for Elfie's hand, squeezing it gently, then holding it to his lips. “You are my people, Elf,” Yancey said, “and it's good to have you back. Even if it's only for a little while.”

  ****

  Elfie sat on the edge of the bed in Yancey's thin-walled guest room. The wind's howl gave way to a far-off coyote yipping through the night for its cubs. The southwest had only recently been swept up by European civilization. Most of the grassland miles continued on in spite of the city, not because of it. Elfie had almost forgotten these prairie sounds in the jazz-steeped nights of the Crescent City.

  As she shed her jacket, she remembered the letter in her pocket.

  She didn't have to open it to know what was in it. She had written a letter to both of them before she left, outlining her reasons for leaving. She had sealed it in an envelope and written their names across it. But she realized, once she’d written it, that she could never let them read it.

  Good grief, she thought to herself, that was all she needed – for that to fall out of her pocket and one of the guys to read it.

  “Yeah, guys, I ran away from jealousy…because of a double shot of it” – from the sudden knowledge that she cared for them both, in the way they obviously cared for each other.

  They would never buy the rest of her defense.

  She carefully hid the letter in the left compartment of her small bag. On the right side compartment was her e-reader. Wasn't that ironic justice?

  She turned up the air conditioner vent in the guest room, where it felt as stuffy as she remembered the room always being. The coolness came through immediately. The breath of the air conditioning helped mask the outside sounds into a smoother quiet. However, the slats vented through another source of sound – the hard shock of muffled voices punching through the wall. Two male voices, a stream of playful laughter flowing through them, their words grinding together like hard flesh on flesh. The tangle of groans quieted into a softer moaning sound…probably kissing, she decided.

  She fought to not picture it. It had to be oral sex. As she had said in the letter, the brutal pleasure of it, the intensely personal, invasive oral sex. It was happening all over again, on the other side of the wall.

  Elfie flicked on the TV beside her bed and fought for focus.

  The groans intensified. She turned up the TV sound.

  The memory kept flickering into view. The memory of the last time she had seen them – in Yancey's room. Yancey's brown-skinned muscles on top the tension-gripped sweaty body of her other best friend. They had looked like wild animals, fucking in heat.

  As the sound from the other room grew louder, she turned up the TV some more and hoped for relief. When that did nothing, she got up and shut the vents to try to block out the sound. It wasn't helping.

  But they had to know she could hear. So what was this? Retribution? A cumulative “fuck you” of sound? Something else?

  She gathered herself up on the bed then covered herself in blankets. Tomorrow would be for business. Tomorrow, she would get beyond all this, do what she had to do, and go the hell back to New Orleans -- even if her heart would be breaking every step of the way.

  Finally, the men stopped. The sounds quieted. She turned up the TV and focused on the sound. Somewhere between the infomercial and the last blare of a silly talk show, she mercifully fell asleep.

  Chapter Two

  She showered, dressed, and grabbed coffee and a bagel from Yancey's cupboard before crawling, with her overnight bag, into Oliver's big Range Rover. The amazing Elfie accomplished all this before anyone else awoke.

  She sat there in the jeep, looking through a detailed list of the locations of exsanguine buffalo. Clipped to it was a graphic veterinarian's report on the condition of the carcasses. Charming.

  After what might have been forty-five minutes, the driver's door to the Range Rover popped open. Oliver, wearing a weird combination of brown dungarees and a red ball cap, ascended sleekly and easily into the driver's seat. He looked around to Elfie, huddled in the backseat with her studies.

  “Anything interesting?” Oliver asked.

  She waved the list at him. “This is one hell of a lot of dead buffalo.”

  Oliver nodded. “It‘s escalating.”

  Elfie shook her head. “It’s increasing.”

  “It’s turkey vultures,” Yancey added, suddenly climbing into the passenger seat.

  Elfie frowned in thought. “Not unless buzzards have started leaving carrion behind.”

  Yancey shrugged a little. “I’m a cop, remember? I‘m a skeptic.”

  “I’m a scientist, remember? So am I,” Elfie said. “You said our first stop is Wolfram Ten Bears?”

  Yancey opened a map on the dashboard as Oliver started the engine. “Yeah, he's an elder. But we call him Billy Jack. Believe me, you'll see why.”

  ****

  She saw why.

  He drove an old wheezing motorcycle out to greet them as their jeep rolled through the wide park gate. He wore a scruffy old leather jacket that damn near matched the color of his leathery old face.

  “That's the elder?” Elfie asked incredulously.

  “You were expecting a war bonnet and a peace pipe?” Yancey asked, tossing a grin her way.

  “I'm from Rapid City, remember? Of course not. I just wasn't expecting...him.”

  When the elder dismounted the motorcycle, he yanked off the old gloves that jibed with his jacket and almost matched his face. As he walked up to the jeep, they didn't leave the vehicle, and he didn’t extend a hand to Yancey. He just glared at them with eyes that looked locked and loaded.

  “Yancey Crow Wolf, where you been keeping yourself?” the old guy asked Yancey through stained teeth. He stared hard over at Elfie in the backseat. “These your friends?”

  Yancey blocked his view of her while he popped open the side door. “Yeah, she’s Elfie Hardesty, and he’s Oliver Ryan. Hop in the jeep. It's more comfortable than your old camper.”

  Elfie felt grateful to be in the rear seat. The old man's conception of personal hygiene seemed startlingly different from hers. He turned around to stare hard at her again with egg-yellow eyes, probably cataracts, until Yancey climbed over the console to yank the old man around so that he faced his direction.

  “Okay, let's hear it,” Yancey said.

  Ten Bears looked back at him. “You asked me to dance, Yancey. You lead, I follow. Ask your questions.”

  “Okay,” Yancey said. “I need you to tell me all the stuff you're supposed to tell me in as short a time as possible. About the Angel Caves and the Jumlin vampire crap.”

  “First,” the old man said, “you tell me what you believe.”

  “I don't believe in anything,” Yancey said.

  “You don't believe in Jumlin, you mean?” the old man asked.

  “No, I don't believe in anything I can't see, hear, touch, taste or smell. Not our gods, not European gods. I'm an atheist. And I certainly do
n't believe in Jumlin and any kind of backward, superstitious mysticism. But, I have promised my grandmother and the elders I would speak to you.”

  “At least you listen to your grandmother,” the old man said. “If the locals had listened to the Indians about the mouse fever, the Hantavirus wouldn’t have killed so many. Indian myths told them all about the mouse fever that came after the big rains.”

  “The Hantavirus was identified by science,” Yancey said. “Jumlin is a fairy tale. You can’t compare the two.”

  Oliver turned around in his seat. “Mr. Ten Bears, I'm an anthropologist. I have more time for mythology than my rude friend here. Just tell us the Jumlin story, and we'll be on our way.”

  The old man nodded toward Oliver. “It’s more than a story. It’s a myth. You know what a myth is, young man?”

  “It’s a lie,” Yancey said.

  Oliver softly cleared his throat, as though to redirect the conversation. He dragged a hand back through his blond hair. “The writer Joseph Campbell said a myth is a public dream. A dream experienced by a lot of people. It reveals a deeper truth.”

  “This dream is a nightmare,” the old man said. “Jumlin told the first lie. He was the first liar, the great deceiver. He was among the oldest entities, so he was very powerful. No one could trust him. To protect the rest, he was imprisoned in the Realm of Spirit Shadows.”

  “If he was so powerful, how could they imprison him?” Yancey asked tartly.

  “He was so old and powerful. He was also very weak. His only great power was in his ability to deceive.”

  “Typical Indian myth,” Yancey said, “it makes absolutely no sense.”

  Oliver gave Yancey another sharp warning glance. “Native Americans are largely aboriginal Asians. What you’ve described, Mr. Ten Bears, sounds like a kind of early Zen thinking. It makes perfect sense. Please ignore him and go on.”

  “There was a medicine man of a tribe,” Billy Jack continued, “who was brother to the chief of the ten tribes. He made a pact with Jumlin so the medicine man’s barren wife might have children.”

  “What kind of pact?” Oliver asked, leaning forward.

  “Jumlin promised the medicine man that, if he used dark magic to return Jumlin to the real world, Jumlin would give the medicine man many sons and daughters. But when the medicine man brought him back, all Jumlin did was possess him, body and soul. With the medicine man’s body, he brought forth children, but they all had Jumlin‘s evil seed in them.”

  “Don't you hate it when that happens?” Yancey asked.

  “You're not doing a good job of listening, as your grandmother wanted,” the old man said, his lips drawing up into a patient grin. “Jumlin’s son, Laughing Bear, was just as evil as he but more cunning. While Jumlin was believed to be destroyed by the magic knowledge of the Hunters, Laughing Bear escaped his father’s fate.”

  “So where is he supposed to be?” Oliver asked. “This Laughing Bear guy.”

  The old man continued, “Laughing Bear and his brothers and sisters still walk the earth. They feed on the blood and flesh of the beasts of the field, on the humans, and they breed with human women. That is what is happening now in the Angel Caves.”

  “I get the allusion, okay?” Oliver said. “The spawn supposedly feed on the blood of the beasts of the field, in other words, the buffalo. Thank you for the information. We'll take all that under advisement.”

  “You may,” the old man said, nodding toward Yancey. “He won't.”

  “Look, Billy, I don't mean to be rude,” Yancey said, “but it's just, there's no evidence there is any reality to this. But, if we find signs of a buffalo-blood-sucking fiend, I’ll let you know. Conversation over.”

  “For your own sake,” Ten Bears said, “and that of your friends, don't dismiss this too quickly. The creatures will do everything in their power to keep the Caves. They are wicked beyond compare. More evil than the deceiver himself. If you need help, you should talk to the trees, Yancey.”

  Yancey shook his head. “I've always found trees to be awful conversationalists. But philámayaye, tókša akhé,” Yancey said with a smile that said “now get the hell out of our Jeep.”

  As Ten Bears left, five minutes passed before Elfie saw the university transport arrive with some nervous-looking undergrad bearing a suitcase-sized container.

  “Is this one of those new super-lasers, like in the comic books?” the big-eyed undergrad asked as Oliver unlocked the hatch for Elfie and the undergrad to slide the contraption inside the cab.

  “Yup,” Elfie said. “I'm really Laser Lady. We're delivering it to Condorman.”

  “Really?” the undergrad asked.

  “No,” she said plainly.

  After the puzzled young man had driven away, Yancey shook his head back at Elfie as she reclaimed her rear seat in the jeep. “You're merciless, you know,” he called back to her.

  “Well, he did ask,” she said.

  ****

  The jostling of the Jeep was constant and steady, lulling Elfie into a ready-made sleep. She had tried to read but kept losing the line against the hazy horizon. She found herself re-reading the same page two or three times. Finally, she just shut down the e-reader and focused on the drone of the wheels.

  More than camping, she hated car trips. And, she truly hated any car trips that would end in camping.

  She began to lose the fight to keep her eyes from closing. She would think she was still awake until she saw a small and stark white face mask staring in at her, as if a kabuki child hung off the side of the Jeep, and that would jolt her awake. She would blink, look around, determine to stay alert, and the cycle would begin anew.

  It was only when the movement stopped that she fully awoke.

  She blinked around. She listened to the drone down of the engine as it murmured softly into silence. She was about to ask if they were “there already” when she held her wristwatch up to a stream of light and saw that nearly two hours had passed.

  “Unlisted dead buffalo that looks like a fresh kill,” Oliver said, shifting the car into neutral.

  “Wonderful,” Elfie groaned.

  They left the jeep and walked the short distance to the dead animal. Elfie studied what remained of it, for all the good it did her.

  “See anything?” Oliver asked.

  “I wish I knew more veterinary science. We'd need a necropsy to say anything for certain.” Elfie reached over to feel the upper musculature. She pushed deeply through the pelt, palpating for a major artery. “It feels suspiciously soft. Exsanguination is certainly a possibility.”

  “I'll go check the area,” Yancey said, walking away.

  Oliver walked up to stand beside her. “How did it die?”

  “No obvious signs of disease. No indications of an accident.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “I’d say it was a drug deal gone bad.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Well, you asked a stupid question,” Elfie replied. “I don't know. I'm not a vet. It's dead. There's no blood that I can tell. That's about the limit of my knowledge of animal anatomy.”

  Oliver smirked, playfully slapping at a shoulder. “Can you at least tell if it died from natural causes?”

  “All deaths have natural causes, don’t they?” she asked, smirking back. “It’s what brings about the natural cause that is the question. But I’d say a buffalo of this size doesn’t come down easy.”

  “I'd agree. Took more than a couple of people to kill it.”

  “We know they weren't Sioux,” Yancey said, walking back to stand with them, “and very few Sioux would kill near ceremonial sites. There's a mound of what looks like cremains just up the rise. We should look at it next.”

  They walked together quickly until they rounded a rock shelf to a pile of what appeared to be bone bits and ash. A mixture of spice, leaves, or dried plants of some kind had been added to the circle around the ash.

  Yancey pointed toward them. “Weird place for cremains.”

  “No way
to say for sure that they're cremains,” Elfie said. “I mean, it could even be a bunch of burned wood and pottery or something. Look at all the dead flora mixed in with them.”

  “No, they’re cremains for sure. With a circle of protection around them,” Yancey said. “I see sage, cedar and wheatgrass. The circle of protection is closed.”

  “So, our friend the village atheist transforms into an American Indian mystic all of a sudden?” Oliver asked wryly.

  “I’m an American Indian who has cremated two grandparents who were traditionals, koka kola. I know the cultural ropes. Bite me.”

  “Later,” Oliver said, laughing.

  She felt herself blush at the obvious double entendre, so she quickly turned back toward the jeep. She looked toward the sky instead. “We’d better move on. It's already afternoon. We'll be losing daylight before we know it.”

  “We'll make it to Old Peso Rock by then,” Yancey said, “I think we can camp there.”

  “Oh, goodie,” Elfie said, climbing back into the jeep. “Let’s break out the s’mores.”

  ****

  It seemed like she had spaced out for some amount of time. She had been reading her e-novel again. Had she been sleeping? It was hard to say. She felt herself losing grasp of the day. She had that long-car-trip surreal feeling, like her head was full of fog. She wasn’t tired; she was just vague. And rather car-sick and twisty-headed.

  “Whatcha reading?” Yancey called back, clearly as bored as she was.

  She didn’t look up. “A novel.”

  “I know. The Captive Bride at Red Rock Ridge. I took a peek at it while you were asleep. Sounds suspiciously like a scarlet fever bodice ripper.”

  “First of all, what the hell are you doing looking at my stuff?” she asked, finally looking up at him. “Secondly, what the hell is a scarlet fever bodice ripper? Not that I probably want to know.”