Jumlin's Spawn Read online

  A teenage Elfie had shaken her head sadly. “It’s impossible, Oliver.”

  “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done,” he’d replied.

  Her eyes had gazed back in frank surprise. “Heinlein!”

  “You like Heinlein?” he’d asked, equally surprised.

  “I adore Heinlein. You like Clarke?”

  “I love Clarke!” he had said.

  Oliver had been a straight-A student, a marathon runner, the unbeaten head of the debate club, and a major uber-geek. How she had worshiped him from afar. “Afar” eventually became “up-close” when he joined her junior high chess club, and she actually had to form coherent sentences in his presence. She eventually had to make ordinary light conversation as the two of them became the club’s ranking chess players.

  Oliver had always been her personal rock star. He had always been both her champion and her toughest critic, her best friend and, at times, her taskmaster. The very appearance of his face, in her younger years, would set her heart skipping over stones. She had worshiped him then.

  She was actually forming whole lucid sentences in his presence by the day they beat Wade Middle School at chess for the first time ever.

  And that had commenced their friendship, during which they had exchanged any number of complex sentences. Given how unique he was, and his mythic trappings, she had not been terribly surprised to learn he was also Yancey’s friend.

  She had known Yancey before Oliver.

  As her dreams shifted, the scene changed to junior high and its main school hallway. She saw herself backed up hard against a wall of metal lockers as the usual gaggle of bully girls snarled words into her face. Elfie had been too slight and slender to wage a defense. Their words kept pounding on her. The detail of their words didn’t matter…they made for a hateful whirring in her head.

  In the dream, a tall young man rushed around that corner and stuck an arm between the bully girls and the girl Elfie once had been.

  “That’s enough,” the young man had hissed. “Stop it. Now.”

  That was the moment she met Yancey. He had come around the corner, taller than anyone she’d ever met. He had walked between her and the bully hive and stuck out an arm. Yancey drew a line in the sand she couldn’t draw. She had loved him immediately.

  She had never seen a whole group of people turn in unison and walk away.

  He would have been the perfect target for them if he hadn’t been so tall. Yancey had never hidden anything, ever, in his life. He had known he was bisexual since his early teens, so “half-fag” and “near-queer” were yelled at him from across the football field.

  He never flinched. He carried himself with pride. He'd been a Sioux kid in a white jungle for long enough to know how. And he taught her, a white girl, all the moves.

  Yancey-love was demanding, overpowering, a gripping primal force that excused nothing, allowed nothing, and held nothing back. She loved him as much as anyone she had ever loved, and the fact scared her.

  Dreaming of the familiar, she awoke to a moment that was instantly alien. Oliver sat beside her, reading over something. With his blond hair in disarray, he looked every inch the tousled-haired poetic figure of her moony girlhood imaginings.

  Yancey had been right. She preferred semi-romantic skirmishes with slight attachments over real relationships. Midnight adventures and a morning breakfast, followed by promises of phone calls that were never kept.

  Maybe because she knew, all the time, she belonged with Oliver and Yancey?

  As she thought through the ramifications again, it felt like every sinew in her body was tightening. Loving Oliver and Yancey at the same time might possibly kill her, though she imagined she would die with a smile on her face.

  The jeep door yanked open. “You guys awake?” Yancey called in. “I need to show you something.”

  He walked them around to the side of the jeep, where a small pile of cremains now lay. They hadn't been there the night before, Elfie was certain.

  “Could someone have brought them here?” Yancey asked, shaking his head. “They sure as hell weren't here last night.”

  “Someone came up to the jeep and spread ashes right by it?” Oliver asked Yancey. “Without us noticing?”

  Yancey stared down at the cremains with obvious concern. He shook his head slowly. “No. They couldn't have. And they wouldn't have. Not like this. Not in the opening, near a car.”

  “Maybe they aren't cremains?” Oliver asked.

  “They're cremains,” Yancey said, as if at the point of despair, “since there's a circle of consecration around them.”

  “But overnight?” Elfie asked, looking around them until she spotted something strange just beyond where they stood.

  She walked about twenty steps away to kneel down and study the dirt going in one direction. Splashes of coagulating blood, tufts of brownish hair in a line pointed toward what looked like a standup cave.

  “What did you find?” Yancey asked.

  “Looks like buffalo pelt,” she said. “This might explain what I heard last night…what I saw last night…after I…walked out.“

  “You said you saw a dog,” Oliver said.

  “I saw a dog…I'm pretty sure. There was very little light, so it looked strange. It had to have been a dog, though. And it was making a weird sound, like it was going to attack. From a distance, there was the sound of another animal in distress. Then, the…dog, I guess…ran away.”

  “In other words, you’re not sure at all you saw a dog,” Oliver replied.

  “And you haven't thought to tell us until now?” Yancey asked quickly.

  “I wasn't exactly in the mood for conversation last night when I came back in, was I?” she snapped. “I told you the basics.”

  Oliver looked around. “So where does the blood trail lead?”

  “Only way to know is to follow it,” she said. She pulled up the jeep's storage bay and yanked out her tool tray bag. “You guys focus on the cremains. I'll be right back.”

  Yancey turned around to look at Oliver, and they both turned back toward her. “Is it safe for you to go in the grotto, you think?” Yancey asked.

  She had already advanced toward the distant standup cave. She turned around to give them a smile while she continued to walk backward. “Yeah, I don't think I can't hurt it too badly.”

  Obsidian, she recognized. The little cave was lined with obsidian. But, the depression only went six feet or so into the cliff. The grotto looked like a giant geode, cut open to the light.

  The blood and shredded pelt had indeed come from a buffalo. The carcass lay there, small enough to fit inside the grotto. It appeared to be young. Its curly brown pelt felt soft to the touch, its skin still warm with life. The other carcass had felt stiff from the twin effects of death and weather. This carcass had just bloated and started to putrefy, which became too apparent with its overwhelming stench.

  This poor thing had fought like hell. Fought for its life, against an enemy far stronger than it was, or so it appeared from the butchery that had been done.

  She knelt to check for life signs, but there were none. Once again, the major arterial junctures felt deflated, empty of blood.

  Just then, she heard a too-familiar burbling sound behind her.

  She felt the presence of something by her shoulder. She slowly looked around.

  Its white face gleamed like high-fired porcelain. The lambent blue eyes burned dark as soot at the center. The worst part was the deadness in them, the vacancy of soul or anything remotely human. It looked like a toddler child, its limbs pink and pudgy. It burbled with the innocent sound of a human baby, but there was nothing innocent about it.

  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.

&
nbsp; 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 cons
ider 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.