Still Life With Crows

might have been buckskin.

He looked away, swallowed, looked back again, and let his breathing slow to a semblance of normality. What he was looking at was a prehistoric Indian burial. He could see the remains of beaded moccasins on the twisted feet, next to a painted parfleche and some tattered feathers.

“Fuck,” said Raskovich out loud, ashamed at his panic, just now realizing what he’d done. He’d blown it. His first job as a real cop and he’d lost it completely, right in front of Sheriff Hazen. Running like a rabbit. And now here he was, lost in a cave, with a killer on the loose, and no idea which way to go. He felt a wave of shame and despair: he should’ve stayed at KSU, keeping kids off the water tower and giving out parking tickets.

Suddenly, he lashed out in rage and frustration, aiming a savage kick at the mummy. His foot connected with a hollowthock and the top of the head exploded in a ball of brown dust. A boiling stream of white insects came skittering out—they looked like albino roaches—and the mummy toppled sideways, the jaw coming loose and rolling a few turns across the ground before coming to a halt among broken pieces of skull. An ivory snake, hidden beneath the rags, uncoiled with a flash and shot off into the darkness like a thin ghost.

“Oh,shit! ” Raskovich shouted, skipping back. “Goddamn it!”

He stood there, breathing hard, hearing the sound of air rattling in his throat. He had no idea where he was, how far he had run, where he should go.

Think.

He looked around, shining his infrared lamp around the damp surfaces of rock. He had been running through a narrow, tall crack with a sandy floor. The crack was so high he could not even make out the top. He could see his own footprints in the sand. He listened: no sound, not even water.

Retrace your steps.

Giving one last glance at the now-desecrated burial, Raskovich turned and walked back along the crack, keeping his eyes on the ground. Now he noticed what had been ignored in his headlong flight: almost every niche and shelf on both sides of the crack was piled with bones and other objects: painted pots, quivers full of arrows, hollow skulls rustling with cave life. It was a mausoleum, an Indian catacomb.

He shivered.

To his relief, he soon left the burials behind. The crack widened and the ceiling came down, and he could make out cruel-looking stalactites overhead. The sandy bottom gave way to shallow terraces of water, layered in strange accretions like rice paddies. As the sand fell behind, so did the trace of his footsteps.

Ahead were two openings, one tall and partly blocked with fallen limestone blocks, the other open. Which way now?

Think, asshole. Remember.

But for the life of him Raskovich could not remember which way he had come.

He thought of shouting, then decided against it. Why attract attention? The thing the dogs had found might still be around somewhere, looking for him. The cave was far bigger than it was supposed to be, but he could still find his way out if he took his time and didn’t panic again. They would be looking for him, too. He had to remember that.

He chose the larger opening and felt reassured by the long tunnel ahead of him. It looked familiar somehow. And now he could see something else, an indistinct reddish blur in the goggles, up on a shelf of rock beside a dark hole. An arrangement of objects. Another burial?

He approached. There was another Indian skull, some feathers and arrowheads and bones. But these were arranged in a very unusual pattern on the shelf of rock. It was disquieting, somehow, like nothing he’d seen in books or museum displays. There were non-Indian objects, too: strange little figures made of string and twine; a broken pencil; a rotting wooden alphabet block; the fragmented head of a porcelain doll.

Jesus Christ, the little arrangement gave him the creeps. He backed away.This wasn’t old. Somebody had taken the old bones and rearranged them with these other things. Raskovich felt a shiver convulse his back.

There was a grunt from the darkness over his shoulder.

Raskovich did not move. There were no more sounds: the silence that descended again was complete. A minute went by, then two, while Raskovich remained frozen, as the uncertainty and terror continued to mount within him.

And then the moment came when he was unable to stop himself from turning. Slowly—very slowly—he twisted around until he saw what had made the noise.

Raskovich fell still, paralyzed once again, not even a whisper of breath escaping his lips.It stood there, grotesque, misshapen, hideous. The sight was so terrible that every detail etched itself into his brain. Was that really a pair of handmade shorts and suspenders on those giant, twisted legs: suspenders decorated with rocking horses? Was that shirt, hanging in tatters from the roped and matted chest, really patterned with comets and rocket ships? And, above them, was that face really,really, so very . . .

The horrible figure took a step forward. Raskovich stared, unable to move. A meaty arm lashed out and swatted him. He fell to the cave floor, the night-vision goggles flying.

The blow broke the spell of terror, and now, finally, he was able to move his limbs. He scrambled backward, blind, a loud keening sound issuing from his throat. He could hear the monster shuffling toward him, making sucking noises with his mouth. He managed to get to his feet and retreated a few steps, the final step dropping into nothingness. He lost his balance and toppled backward, tensing, expecting to land heavily against the hard stone floor of the cave, but there was nothing, nothing at all, just a great rush of wind as he hurtled into a dark void, endlessly down, down—

Sixty-Five

 

Hank Larssen turned to face Cole and Brast. The troopers looked like goggle-eyed monsters in the reddish light.