Hell Is Empty

17

I listened to myself breathing and thought about whether or not I was dead-it felt like it.

My breath was ragged, and no matter how fast I thought I was, I couldn’t catch it. When I tried to stand the first time, my kneecaps had sounded like heads of iceberg lettuce being twisted apart, and I’d fallen. This is how it ends with everyone. You fall-you don’t get back up. I wondered if Henry and Joe would find me, or if some unfortunate alpinist would stumble across me. If I was as off the main ascent routes as I thought I was, then it was possible that no one would find me for years. Like the man who disappeared into Lake Marion, I wouldn’t come home and people would say, “Hey, do you remember that sheriff of Absaroka County that up and disappeared?”

Dumb ass. Yep, that’d be me.

I crouched a little lower against the boulder and tried to concentrate, but my head was killing me again, if I wasn’t dead already. Thinking had become more and more difficult since Virgil had left.

I’d never given up on anything in my life when I was alive. I hadn’t always won, I hadn’t always been right, but I’d never given up. Not till now. Now that I was dead.

So, was that my purpose, to lead Virgil to this point? Maybe this was what it was like to be dead, going through the motions until you came to a grinding halt thinking about all the things that you still had to do. It certainly didn’t seem so different from being alive.

Who would they send for me-the same individuals who had saved me before on this mountain and who had haunted Shade throughout his lifetime? Maybe it was like Virgil’s statements about the Inferno, that all horrors are horrors of the mind. We summon up the devils we need to punish us for the things that we’ve done. If that was the case, then why had they sent me for Virgil?

Cady.

I wanted to talk to her about Virgil’s prophecy. I thought about the cell phone and what the chances were that it still had battery power- Slim to None: The Walt Longmire Story.

I moved my hand up the length of the lance and could feel the horsehair wrapping around my hands with the wind, almost as if it was gripping me back. The deer hooves clacked together like chimes and the elk teeth mimicked them. In that small darkness with my eyes closed, I thought specifically of the things that I had to do, and the order in which I had to do them. I had to move, dead or alive. I couldn’t allow Virgil to face Raynaud Shade alone. It was his responsibility, but it was my duty.

You have haunting to do.

I decided to put Virgil’s beliefs to the test. My back felt like it was going to snap, but I hoisted the ascent pack onto my shoulder and used the lance to stand, my knees once again doing the vegetable melody.

I stood there in the blowing snow feeling like some mountain sentry, but it helped to stand, not to fall down, not to concede, not to die-not again. I readjusted the balaclava back over my face, pulled the collar of the jacket up, the Gore-Tex encrusted with iced condensation and frozen mucus from my runny nose.

I growled in my throat, just to give my body a warning, and then turned to let my eyes follow Virgil’s footprints as they angled up. I could see only two steps before they vanished into the low-flying clouds and blowing snow.

Two steps.

“Two steps.”

I smiled at my cracking voice sounding back the words of my mind like the echoes from the rock walls below. I knew they were my words because ghosts’ teeth didn’t chatter-or did they?

Just two.

“Just two.”

Swallowing what moisture there was left in my mouth, I turned and looked up the boulder field toward the summit, or where the summit should’ve been-and started up.

My right leg had become weaker than my left, probably because it was my dominant side and I had used it more strenuously. The strain on the tops of my thighs was excruciating, and my ankles moved like nineteenth-century hinges connected to my lead-encased feet. I kept my head down, dragging the snowshoes and concentrating on the rapidly disappearing prints, using the lance as a walking staff the same way the big Crow had.

I remembered that there was still a water bottle in the ascent pack, so I rested the lance against my shoulder and fumbled to get the container out. I found the thing and took no comfort in the fact that it felt like an anvil encased in plastic. I used my teeth to unscrew the top and then stuck the mouth of the bottle into my own. There was no residual water so I put the cap on as best I could and tucked the frozen bottle inside my coat next to the paperback of Inferno. The second the bottle got inside, I realized I’d made a mistake and plunged a hand in to get it away from me. My core body temperature was fighting a battle of its own, and I’d just dropped a thermal bomb on it for its trouble. I yanked the bottle from the neck opening in my coat and watched as it arced through the air like a mortar and disappeared into the darkness.

“Well done.”

I took the spear back in my hands and looked at it. Why had he taken my rifle? It was the one of the two weapons that I would’ve chosen, but not the one I would’ve suspected for Virgil. Even with only one round left, maybe he wanted to make sure.

“Vengeance is mine.”

Maybe so, but maybe it’s only the living that can kill the living.

“And the dead that can kill the dead.”

At least I still had my. 45, and for close work it would do just as well.

“You just have to get to the top.”

I stumbled and almost fell, catching myself with the lance and pressing it against my face, the coyote skull against my own. The decorations on the staff were acting as wind chimes, but I could hear something overlying the rhythm-a pattern that was staccato and sharp. A sound from my past.

I took another couple of deep breaths and listened, but it didn’t repeat itself.

Vertigo slipped my perception just a little, and I almost felt as if I was falling again. I swallowed, but there was nothing there. I tried to remember what it was that I was doing, why I was leaning against a war lance. The top, I had to make it to the top of this mountain-something about Virgil and his grandson, Owen.

“Raynaud Shade.”

I kicked off again, and this time headed straight up the incline. The big Indian’s steps were rapidly disappearing, and if I didn’t get moving and fast, I’d never catch up with him. He had angled his ascent, possibly to lessen the climb, but more likely in order to reach the top in some other direction than the one Shade might anticipate. There wasn’t much room to maneuver with the cliffs on all sides, but Virgil was highly motivated. The only problem was that I’d seen Virgil die by Raynaud Shade’s hands once, if not twice, already.

The rhythm repeated itself, more sharply this time, and it felt as if something flew by me, something small that sparked off of one of the larger boulders to my right, ricocheting deep into my memory. Gunfire. It was the Armalite set on automatic, and then the single, thundering shot of the Sharps.

I pushed off with a great deal more urgency, actually finding the momentum easier to sustain. I switched the war lance to my left hand and dropped my right one down to my holster-and felt nothing.

I panicked and yanked at my jacket with stony fingers, but the holster was most assuredly empty.

My eyes blinked in the safely encased goggles as a fullblown gust traveled from the center of my body. I could not remember holstering the Colt on the Knife’s Edge. I’d been so startled by Virgil’s appearance, the. 45 must have slid from my chest when I stood.

There’s no feeling like the one you have when you realize you are desperately in need of a gun and, in one of the few times in your life, don’t have one. That short-circuited, spasmodic split second shot through me as I tried to think of what else I had in the way of firearms, but there was nothing. I couldn’t go back; I barely had the energy to make it the twenty yards to the top, let alone a round-trip close to two hundred.

Never find it.

“Never make it.”

The spear.

“For heaven’s sake.”

Dropping my head like a buffalo bull, I charged up the hill as if I was in slow motion, and the only thing I was conscious of hearing was my breathing. My lungs felt like they were going to burst from my mouth as I continued to push in a direct line for the top. It took forever, and I was sure I was going to stumble into a firefight, but when I did stumble it was because I had reached a flat spot.

I stopped and looked around, breathing so hard I was afraid I might swallow the balaclava. The wind was even stronger near the summit where there was nothing between the North Pole and me, the blowing snow enough to prove it; streaming diagonally, the flakes looked like meteors.

“Hell, they might as well be meteors for as high as I am.”

I was at the apex of the Bighorn range. There was a downgrade to my right and a large outcropping at the center, but the entire summit was no larger than the size of a basketball court, a basketball court with out-of-bounds lines that plunged in a sheer vertical drop of a mile.

I stepped to the left and could feel the platform of granite rising another three feet against my leg. I didn’t move but listened for something, anything that would give me an indication of where Virgil or Shade might be. I could only see maybe three feet ahead of me. I stretched out an arm and watched as my hand disintegrated and disappeared.

I drew it back, afraid that it might not still be there.

There was movement to my left, and I yanked my head around to see nothing except a few Tibetan prayer flags that someone had placed there. There were capsules lodged in the cracks of the rock as well, some of them evident and others half covered with snow.

They had to be here, unless they had already shot each other. I grazed my hand along the granite platform, leaned forward, and picked up the end of a tail.

Carefully, I lowered my goggles and, lifting and brushing the snow aside, could see that it was the painted buffalo hide that Hector had mentioned had been hanging on the wall at Deer Haven. Why in the world would Shade have dragged that all the way up here?

I sat and pulled my legs up after me, effectively joining the buffalo hide as if I were at a picnic. I sat there for a minute before noticing there was a lump at the center of the ceremonial robe that was now in the center of the Crow and Cheyenne world.

I laid the spear on the snow and leveraged an elbow to get closer, passing my hand over the surface and clearing the portion that read DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE EVIDENCE.

I pulled the black, rubberized duffel toward me, the yellow letters looming large like passing a billboard on the highway. I lay there for a second, then snagged the large zipper pull and drew it back a little. I could see bones, so I reached into my coat pocket, pulled the femur from the protective Gore-Tex, and poked it into the bag.

Owen was whole again.

I rested my face against the rubber and felt like I had accomplished something-that even if I was dead I had finished the job.

“You just won’t die, will you?”

At the sound of his voice, I rose on one elbow and rolled away with the duffel still in my hands. There were no more words from the darkness, and unless his one eye was better than my two, he couldn’t see me any better than I could see him. I tried to come up with something pithy but then decided that remaining silent might be a pretty good idea since the range of my weapon was only about six feet.

I grazed back across the buffalo hide and grabbed the war lance, dragging it back to me.

“I’m glad to see you.”

The direction of the voice had changed, and he was now to my right.

“We’re the only ones that they speak to, you and I.”

To the left.

I raised myself up, aiming the head of the spear into the gloom.

“I can’t believe you’re still alive after all the times I’ve killed you.”

Continuing left.

“You must be dead.”

Right.

“Hell, I don’t even have any bullets left. No bullets. Do you believe that?”

No.

“You probably have bullets left in that rifle of yours, even if I shot you a few minutes ago, huh?”

Maybe.

“No blood though. That concerns me; no blood.”

It was quiet for a moment, and I took the opportunity to slip the goggles back up over my eyes. The way he had positioned himself, I was looking directly into the storm and the barrage of darting flakes.

“Are you a ghost now, Sheriff?”

I struggled onto my knees with the duffel between my legs.

“I sometimes think that I’m a ghost; that I wasn’t really meant for this world. It’s been that way ever since I was young and especially since I killed the boy. I think I knew what I was at that point, and what it was that I would become. There is no shame in it, becoming what your nature says you must be.”

The spear in my hands felt like a telephone pole as I swung it slowly to where the voice continued speaking.

“Why are you here? I would have thought that you would’ve given up, but I suppose these same demons chase you. What is it you have done, Sheriff?”

I didn’t move and still could see nothing except the shifting shadows of wave after wave of the snow in the air. It seemed as if the wind was lessening again and the flakes were now taking advantage of the situation to move in the air in patterns of their own, making it even more impossible to see.

“I think they answer to a terrible need-what is your terrible need?”

This time his voice came from my left and sounded closer. I planted my knees so that I could move quickly to the side.

“I have not finished my work. I must bury this boy here among the forever snow and ice, leaving his spirit behind so that mine may continue onward. It is like that; sometimes you must cut a part of yourself away so that you may grow. I was not sure if I needed blood sacrifice for this medicine, but I brought the woman along for that purpose. When I saw that you were determined to follow me, I changed my plan. I could see that the demons wanted you here, or why else would they keep dragging you back from the grave?”

“Maybe I’ve just got friends in high places.” As I said the words, I pivoted to the right and dragged the duffel with me; the. 223 fired high but still sliced through the sleeve of my jacket.

One shot, and then I heard the telltale click of the empty magazine; unless he had others for this particular weapon, he was out. He could still have one of the semiautomatics from the Feds, but to be honest, I was beyond caring.

Maybe I was beyond everything.

I raised myself up on my feet as silently as I could, propped my legs against each other, and prepared for whatever was coming next. Teetering there like a tree ready to fall, I held out my lone branch in an attempt to keep the demon at bay.

I stood like that, breathing the air through my collar and listening for anything. He’d gotten quiet, having played his main gambit, and now it was just going to be a battle of his nerve against mine.

My breathing was taking a toll on my equilibrium, and I found myself billowing back and forth with each breath, almost in a hypnotic state.

I was looking north, ever north at the house. It was as if I were the house, shuddering in the arctic wind. I felt the broken dishes in the sink and the emptiness of the exploded canning jars in the cellar. There were shoes by the bed, large, steel-toed workboots with the toes curled where they have sat for almost a year. There was a bottle there, empty and broken at the neck. It was lying on the floor, the glass shrouded by dust.

His last thoughts are of him, the boy; of what will become of his son.

There is no firewood left, no food, no water, nothing, just winter sunshine.

The touch of the white man’s Indian woman clung in the floral design of the paper peeling away from the bedroom walls like dried leaves and the oilcloth-covered shelves. Tattered dishcloths and rags were stuffed in the cracks of the windows, frozen solid with the seeping moisture and dreadful cold.

The Indian woman left him and the child.

What will become of the boy?

This far from the lodges, the powwows, the meeting places, and the warmth of human interaction, a fire glowed in the darkness of an open closet door; a small set of eyes peered over the pulled-in knees at the warmest spot in the otherwise abandoned house.

What will become of the boy?

In a place near the arctic tundra all those silent months, the psychologists said that he spoke to him, keeping a running monologue that had mirrored the conversations that they had had when the man was alive and troubled in his mind.

What will become of the boy?

The mummified body of the old man did not smell any longer, a blessing that he died in the winter, holding off the creatures that would return him to the earth. The boy did not allow that when they came, fighting them till his fingers bled from the nails that he dug into the doorjambs. He had become one of those animals, and the social services people commented on the butcher knife that rose from the father’s chest and how ferocious were the two eyes that would someday become one.

I stared at the flourishes on Virgil’s weapon moving with the wind. The small, delicate feathers hidden among the brass beads were owl and, according to both the Cheyenne and the Crow, the messengers of the dead. Transfixed, I watched the tiny feathers. They were the only things on the spear that didn’t move.

It arrived slowly, that finger-up-the-spine feeling, but when it struck me, I became completely alert with a shudder that took what little breath I had. My lungs constricted, and I twisted the war lance the way Virgil had shown me. It had seemed so important to him then, and I hadn’t understood-but now I did.

Rolling the heavy lance over my shoulder, flipping it, and then wrapping my hands around it like rawhide sinew, I arched back and careered it with my entire weight.

It struck something solid with a liquid thump. It was good that it did because otherwise the momentum would’ve carried me over the east face. The end of the spear disappeared into the whiteout.

I could see the coyote jaws at the base and the leather wrapping, the red felt, the deer toes, the elk teeth, and the wisps of horsehair that were swinging with the wind and the momentum like the tails of an entire remuda. The painted decorations on the coyote skull were somehow more vibrant in the darkness and snow. The owl feathers remained motionless.

Hand over hand I pulled it back to me like a fisherman pulling in his catch and, emerging from the mist, there he was. The force of the blow must’ve cracked his sternum like a chicken bone, and the lance had driven all the way in to the hilt. His head was hanging down, the long hair hiding his face completely.

With each pull, he took unsteady steps toward me, and it was only when I got him within four feet that I could see the blood that spilled like an open spigot. His arm started to rise, and I saw the steak knife in his hand. He swung it faster than I would’ve thought possible, and the blade missed me by the closest of fractions.

It was all he had, and his next move was a groping, loose-limbed gesture that I caught with my open hand. I fastened what little grip I had left on his forearm and held him there. Slowly his head began to rise, and it took so long, I was sure that he wouldn’t make it, but he did.

That frightening lone living eye stared at me through the hair, and he choked the words through the freezing strings of blood that hung from his mouth. “Are-you-dead?”

I kept my eyes on him through the amber plastic and tried to tell him the truth even though I wasn’t sure what that was anymore. I owed him that much. “No.”

He breathed out a sigh of surprise, and I felt him grow heavy on the end of the lance as we both kneeled to the ground. Our faces were only a few inches apart. I moved my hand farther up the length of the spear, thinking I might be able to jimmy the thing from his chest, but when I did, he used his free hand to stop me. “No.” The hand, slippery with blood, fell away.

I watched as the shine in the one eye dimmed. He slumped forward, and only leaning against the length of the lance kept him partially erect. I reached across with a clumsy hand and closed the eye.

I don’t know how long we both sat there, but I began to lose consciousness after a while. They say that one of the more unpleasant aspects of stage three hypothermia is that along with decreased cellular activity, your body actually takes longer to undergo brain death.

I had a lot of time to think.

The shaking had completely subsided now, a sure sign that my body had given up trying to warm itself. I suppose my pulse and respiration rates would slow as well and before long my major organs would fail-including my heart.

I really didn’t think that there was any way Henry and Joe were going to be able to find me in time, and if they did, what could they do? The bag containing the remains of Owen White Buffalo lay on the ground between my knees, but my eyes refused to budge from Raynaud Shade. It was a horrifying yet compelling display; the strands of saliva and blood had solidified and, even if I could’ve gotten the spear loose, he would’ve remained locked in the same position.

Maybe that was what was happening to me; I was solidifying along with Shade and the mountain itself. It was almost as if even my breathing had stopped. I tried to blink and was shocked when I did. Closing my eyes felt good, and I thought about just leaving them closed but I had one more thing to try to do.

I shrugged, attempting to get my hand to rise up and unzip my inside pocket. No luck. I couldn’t get the zipper pulled with my glove on my hand, so I dropped my chin, trapped a few fingers against my chest, and pulled the glove loose. I yanked on the small tab and it unzipped, the gymnastics of which threw off my balance. I fell against the lance, only inches away from Shade.

I sat there for longer than I thought, then pushed my hand up to where I could feel Saizarbitoria’s cell phone and something else in the pocket, and started working whatever it was out from the bottom. The paperback of the Inferno fell onto my lap. I stared at it and watched as it slipped onto the bag containing Owen.

My attention slowly returned to the phone. I turned it over, stared at the buttons a few more seconds, and then hit the red one.

Nothing.

I gasped one of the last warm breaths I had in utter desolation but then watched as the device flickered green with letters that read LOW BATTERY. With a facility I wasn’t aware that my thumb still had, I punched in the 215 area code and then the rest of the number. I pulled at the elastic band of the goggles that had guarded my ears and pressed the phone to my face.

The phone rang and then rang again in agonizing slowness. It rang one more time, and then my daughter’s recorded voice began speaking. “This is Cady Longmire. I’m unable to answer your call right now, but if you’ll leave a message I’ll get right back to you.”

“Cady-it’s… it’s Dad.” The beep I was supposed to wait for interrupted me and I started again. “Cady, it’s Dad. I’m a long way from home. I just… I wanted to tell you that I love you, and that I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry that I’m not going to get to meet her.. .” I could feel my eyes watering. “I heard some news; a little bird told me-well, a big one actually.” I swallowed and tried to come up with some more words but before I could, I heard another beep and the phone disconnected. When I shifted it around, the screen was dead. I had no idea how much of my last message had gotten through.

I would have thrown it if I’d had enough energy, but instead, I simply let it slip from my hand. Crouched against the diagonal shaft of the war lance and turned away from the wind, I clawed the bag containing Owen a little closer-if they found me, they were damn well going to find Owen.

I’d make sure of it.

I couldn’t raise my arms any longer, and I couldn’t feel my legs. The effort of making that phone call was my last. It was all I could do to continue breathing, and my head dropped against the trade cloth on the lance.

The pin feathers were clogged with ice and were higher than any owl would’ve ever carried them. They were curled with the absolute cold but still did not move. Taking that as a sign, I used what energy the core of my body had left and closed myself in with the bones of the boy, the book, and the dead man.

As I lay there looking over his shoulder, I could see something in the snow and frozen fog.

I smiled as best I could and waited.

He leaned into the wind and spoke to me, and I was amazed to feel it die down with his voice. “How are you, Lawman?” He came closer, and it was as if he clouded the unsheltered sky. “Do you know how this place really got its name? There was an Absaalooke boy hunting these mountains who was pushed from a cliff by an evil man. The boy fell but was able to reach a cedar branch. As he hung there he was spoken to by seven bighorn sheep led by a great ram by the name of Big Iron. Big Iron saved the boy and gave him the gift of many powers-wisdom, alertness, agility, and a brave heart. Big Iron told the boy that the seven ruled the Bighorn Mountains and that the Absaalooke must never change the name or they would become as nothing.”

The only air that I could feel moving was from his breath; strangely warm with a vague scent of cedar, and his features began to change; first the signature scar healed itself, then the wrinkles softened and stretched away as if the years were melting. The girth of the man folded into himself and became smaller, like a child.

“It was fun being big.”

I tried to raise a hand, but it wouldn’t cooperate. Instead the boy reached out, clasped my shoulder in a surprisingly strong grip, and leaned forward to whisper. “Aho.”

My head lolled back, and as I looked into the sky, the vaporous trails and darting meteorites of snow subsided.

At first the view streaked like a dirty windshield, but gradually, small specks of starlight began filtering through and I was sure I was seeing the night sky. The fog and snow was level with the top of the mountain, and it was as if I were resting on a plain of clouds stretching out forever.

I thought about the thirty-fourth canto and could actually remember all the words of the closing passage. Perhaps it was because it had been specifically final, perhaps it was the relief of finishing the thing, or perhaps it was that last gasp of hope when Dante followed Virgil from that dismal underworld.

We climbed, he going first and I behind, until through some small aperture I saw the lovely things the skies above us bear.

Now we came out, and once more saw the stars.

The waxing moon tossed a dull glow on the surface of the clouds, but it was the scattered layers of stars that held my attention. I looked at them and tried to feel the courageous heat of their battle as they fought against the natural state of all things in the universe: dead cold.

I could see the thick band of the Milky Way leading back through the galaxy. I tried to raise my head, but it fell to the side. Someone placed a hand on my face, and I looked up as best I could; it was like looking out of a well. “Owen.”

The face came close but the breath was colder this time, and I could’ve sworn he was chewing gum. “Hey, hey-he’s alive.”

I could see something-they were Indians the way they always were. Two now, but closer, backlit by the thick stripe of the Milky Way running the distance from horizon to horizon; Virgil’s Hanging Road-the direct path to the Beyond-Country.

Muffled and strained, I could hear someone speaking with more urgency than I thought the situation deserved. “What did he say?”

“A name, I think.”

I wanted to laugh. If I could have formed the words, if my lips could have moved or my tongue cooperated, I would have laughed and told them that sometimes it helps to be dead to confront your demons, and that I had been dead a long time.