Angelfire

SIX

COLLEEN

Goldman was gone when I went to wake him and Doc for their watch. At first I hoped that he might’ve just hit the bushes to take a whiz (What was I thinking?), but I realized pretty quickly that some essential items were missing-his pack, canteen, and a machete-things a guy doesn’t usually take along to the latrine.

We scrambled, packing up bedrolls and supplies and loading up the horses in record time. It was dark and misty and our lamps bounced light back at us from every billow. It was hardly ideal for tracking anyone, not even Goldman, who obviously wanted to be tailed. But at least we didn’t seem to be drawing lurkers.

He had about a three-hour head start, but he was on foot and he didn’t cover his tracks any better than he had the last time. In fact, to make damn sure we could track him, he’d left all sorts of crap helter-skelter in his wake. A game die, a little wooden top, a couple of bright-colored magnets, a red bandanna, the occasional comic button. (Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.) When he ran out of his pack-ratty odds and ends, he switched to bits of buckskin fringe.

Two hours into our little trek we entered an area of weirdness where the terrain was strangely lumpy. There were mysterious gullies and groves and eerie little hills that were just too neat and regular and flat on top. Now, I don’t have a lot of imagination, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that huge prehistoric beasts were crouched along the trail.

When the moon slid out of the clouds my mental image morphed big-time. I’ve been in houses where the owners have covered over everything with sheets for a long vacation. It’s damn spooky. Suddenly, I felt like I was a mouse in one of those places, just waiting for something big and toothy to come flying out from under the sheets.

We came out onto a paved road, and I caught the scent of wood smoke. Less than a mile to the north we caught sight of a stand of trees that seemed to have a million tiny stars caught in their twigs. Campfire. We tethered the horses out of earshot of the camp and left Doc on guard. Cal and I crept up on the circle of light.

Bingo. Our boy Goldie was perched on a tree stump in front of a roaring fire, having a cozy fireside chat with the Bluesman himself.

I felt Cal’s eyes on my face.

Oh, yeah, and a flare. She was resting on a fallen tree next to the Blues Guy, watching Goldie through huge, iridescent eyes.

“Yeah, I see her,” I mumbled.

Cal pushed through the underbrush into the firelight, hand on his sword hilt. “Care to introduce your friends, Goldie?”

Goldie’s new friends didn’t want to be introduced. The Bluesman clutched his guitar and bolted into the bushes; his little flare friend shot skyward and vanished after him.

“Shit!” Goldman yelled, and followed without a backward glance.

Needless to say, Cal and I were hot on his heels. We were swallowed up in moments in a maze of hills and valleys. We turned right and left and right again, following Goldie’s lead. Every turn was a right angle that took us deeper into a place I expected to have nightmares about for weeks to come.

I’d caught up with Goldie and Cal when our quarry turned one last corner into what I would’ve sworn was a dead end. The broad, shallow clearing was long, straight, and ran smack into the bottom of a huge, flat-topped hill.

We had them. I was sure of it. But when we reached the bottom of the hill, what had seemed like a dark smudge at the base turned out to be somewhat more than a smudge. It was the mouth of a cave. The Blues Guy and his flare disappeared into it. And I do mean disappeared.

Cal, Goldman, and I came up short in a Three Stooges collision. The hole in the hill was filled with darkness so thick, I expected it to stick to my hands.

Goldman lifted a hand and blue-white light spilled out of it, rolling into the black and creaming it to a lumpy gray. We all pressed forward, straining to see into the pocket of fake twilight. All three of us expected, I’m sure, to see a passage-or worse, a bunch of passages-leading into the strange mound of earth, but there was no passage. The opening in the hillside was about the size of an elevator and went absolutely nowhere.

“Sonofabitch,” I said, and didn’t even feel the words fall out of my mouth.

We checked the little hole out thoroughly by Goldman’s ball lightning, thumping and prodding and kicking at the rocks and dirt. We got nothing for our troubles but bruises.

“Maybe our eyes were playing tricks on us,” Cal said. “Maybe they didn’t even come in here. Maybe they turned and scooted into those trees.” He nodded to the west where a grove of near-leafless trunks huddled in the gloom.

“They went in here,” Goldman insisted, just as he’d insisted there was a flare.

He’d get no argument from me.

Cal studied the rocky wall for a moment, then said, “I’ll go back for Doc and the horses. We may as well spend what’s left of the night here.”

He turned to Goldie, eyes glittering in the ghost-glow. “I hope you’ve got a really good story to tell.”

Goldie snuffed the twisted little ball of light. “I’ll be working on it.”

“This is getting to be a bad habit with you, Goldman,” I told him once Cal had sprinted away down the grassy path. “You get some wild burr up your butt and-pool-you pull a vanishing act.”

“Yes, and you were trying to convince Cal I was hallucinating random flares. I had to prove you wrong. Sometimes, Ms. Brooks, my perceptions can be trusted. I took a calculated risk and it paid off.” He squatted in the mouth of the cave, his back against the uneven wall. “So, you gonna say it?”

“Say what?”

“Oh, come on, Colleen.”

“Oh hell, fine. You were right-I was wrong. There is a flare. Happy?”

“Her name is Magritte,” he said.

We spent the rest of the wait in silence, peering warily into the mist and shadow, moving only when we heard the horses navigating the maze.

We made a hasty camp at the edge of the grove of semi-naked trees, lit a fire, and hunkered down around it. Then Cal got in Goldie’s face. He was angry, tired, and a little frustrated, and all of that bled into his voice.

“Why’d you run off, Goldie?”

“You want the long answer or the short answer?” asked Goldman in return.

“I want the truth, long or short.”

“Okay. The truth is, I overheard you and Colleen discussing my mental state and I wanted a chance to prove I wasn’t delusional… at this time.”

Cal sat back against his log. “I didn’t believe you were delusional.”

“Yeah, but if you’d talked to Doc, you might. Look, I’m a classic case, I know that. And my former lifestyle didn’t help any. Doc wouldn’t have had any choice but to tell you that I show a number of symptoms of someone ramping up for hypomania.”

Doc shook his head. “I would never have leapt to such a conclusion, Goldie. Nor would I have encouraged Cal to make a decision based on what might or might not be the symptoms of hypomania.”

Goldie leaned into the campfire, his big, glittering, dark eyes on Cal’s face. “It was like a door opened up in my head, Cal. Like the music was so close I was the one singing it. I had to go.”

“Without us?” asked Cal.

“I’m an impulsive bastard. Forgive me. But… the music isn’t always all that clear. It comes and goes. Tonight it came. I followed it. I knew you’d follow me.”

Cal looked off into the dark. “Put that way, it almost sounds logical. Okay, I think I understand that part of it. What do you know about them?” His head jerked toward the Doorway to Nowhere.

Goldie’s eyes lit up. “Okay. Um … his name is Enid. Enid Blindman. He’s half Lakota … on his father’s side. He’s a musician-we knew that-and the flare’s name is Magritte. Pretty, isn’t it?”

Cal rested his forehead on his knees, hiding his face. I’d bet he’d like to borrow a cup of patience right about then. I was fresh out.

“Spill it, Goldman,” I said. “Didn’t you get anything but names?”

Goldie’s eyes flashed briefly over the rest of us, then he said, “Before the Change-just before-Enid’s manager signed him to a contract with an independent record label in Chicago.”

“And what does this have to do with anything?” I asked.

“I’m getting to that. When the Change happened, his music got twisted. It affects people-attracts them. So, he uses it to gather refugees-lost sheep, he called them-and take them to someplace called the Preserve.”

Cal’s head came up. “Where’s that?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t get that far. He just called it the Preserve. He says a friend of his-a woman named Mary-runs the place. That’s where he takes all the people he collects.” “Why, Goldie?” asked Doc. “Why does he do this?”

“To save them. That’s what he said. To save them from what’s out here.”

“And this flare,” said Doc, “this Magritte-is she also called by him-held by his music?”

Goldie scratched around in his curly tumble of hair. “Well, no. Not exactly. They’ve got sort of a mutual protection racket going there.”

“Protection?” repeated Cal. “From what?”

“Well, he’s protecting her from the Source-they didn’t call it that, but they understand that it’s sentient and that it eats flares for breakfast. Enid said he saw a bunch of them taken in Chicago. He was there when it came for Magritte. That was when he discovered that his music could jam the Source. They’ve been together ever since. They fell in with this Mary and started working for her.”

“And the flare’s protecting him from …?” Cal prompted.

“Oh, yeah. That’s where the record deal comes in, sort of. It’s his manager, if you can believe it. Some guy named Howard.”

“Some guy named Howard,” parroted Cal. “Why? What’s this Howard doing to him?”

“Um, he didn’t get to that part. We were interrupted.” He had the absolute balls to give Cal a look of reproach.

Cal rubbed a hand over his face. To my utter disbelief, he was hiding a smile.

I glared at Goldman (the dipshit). “Look, can he protect any flare with this music of his?”

“I think so. It’s a damping field of some sort-a jamming frequency. It creates a sonic veil that the Source, for some reason, can’t penetrate.”

“But when we came upon you,” Doc observed, “he had stopped playing to speak with you.”

“I had the presence of mind to ask him about that, actually,” Goldman said, suddenly cheery. “It’s sort of like my little balls-o’-fire thing, but a lot more powerful. A little touch of thought goes a long way. The real music’s in his head.” He tapped his skull. “And that just keeps going. There’s something about this place, too. Enid said this place is lousy with power.” He shook his head, looking up wistfully into the branches of our sheltering trees. “I can only feel its ghost.”

We raised our eyes in unison to gaze around at the eerie, fog-draped shapes.

“What is this place?” I asked, and tried not to shiver.

In answer, Doc pulled something out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. It was a brochure, damp but still colorful. It showed the front of a modern red brick building with a well-manicured lawn and box hedge. Below that was a big photograph of one of the unnaturally neat hills.

“ ‘Grave Creek Mound State Park,’ ” I read, “ ‘and Delf Norona Museum. Open year-round since 1978.’ ”

“Let me see.” Cal snatched the brochure out of my hand, unfolded it on his lap, and read: “ ‘Grave Creek Mound is probably the most famous of the Adena burial mounds and certainly one of the most impressive.’ ” He stopped reading and looked up at us. “It says they hauled the dirt in baskets. Some of these mounds are over sixty feet high.”

“And two thousand years old,” added Doc. “It is comforting to meet with something of such longevity.”

Comforting. Two-thousand-year-old burial mounds. I will not twitch, I promised myself.

“Where did you get this?” Cal asked Doc.

He shrugged. “While I awaited you, the mist cleared a bit. I saw a building just up the road-that building”-he gestured at the brochure-“and thought to investigate. It is not quite so tidy now.”

“Did it look like anyone else had been in there recently?” Cal asked.

Doc shook his head. “Hard to say. Surely, there had been people there at one time or another. But as to recently, I couldn’t say. Why do you ask?”

“I was wondering if this place might be part of the Bluesman’s underground railroad. Maybe some of his lost sheep are hiding around here-”

Goldie was shaking his head. “He’d already delivered them.”

“Delivered?” I repeated. Jeez, like they were pizzas or takeout or something.

Goldie just blinked his big brown eyes at me.

Cal folded the brochure back up and absently tucked it into his pocket. “That means the Preserve is nearby. Hidden, maybe, but nearby. Possibly even inside that mound. We should be able to find it by daylight.” He stood. “You all get some sleep. I’ll stand watch.”

“Why you?” I asked. “You’ve already stood watch.” “Colleen is right,” agreed Doc. “If anyone should stand watch, Calvin, it is me.”

They argued about it while I slid into my bedroll. I’d stood watch, too, and what I needed now was sleep, not a pitched battle.

Doc won. Cal was asleep in a matter of seconds. Goldie palmed one of his little “balls-o’-fire” and wandered over into the mouth of the cave. As if it could make the dead end any less dead. I slept.

When I woke, there was almost-sunlight creeping about the glen through the mist. The mounds were a lot clearer now, but they hadn’t lost any of their weirdness. Hard to believe they were like this before the Change, too.

After a freezing sponge bath in a nearby stream, I came back to camp to find Cal up and about. Doc was heating water and cobbling together a breakfast. Goldie was nowhere in sight.

Exchanging glances, Cal and I wandered over to the foot of the mound. It rose, green and velvety and sculpted, a good forty or fifty feet above ground level. Mist curled out of the little cave like steamy breath. My imagination woke up, and I was staring at a big green animal with a gaping mouth. A shiver rippled up my back.

Goldie was in the cave, sitting cross-legged on the floor like a Buddha, staring at the blank wall as if it was going to do something fascinating.

“Hey, Goldie,” Cal said. “Doc’s throwing some breakfast together.”

Goldman didn’t answer. He just got up, raised a hand as if to wave us away, then stepped into the rocks and earth as if they were billows of fog. He disappeared.

“Damn,” I said, and meant it.