glanced over at their faces, he could see they were scared. He, too, felt an uneasiness here, but it was more than made up for by the feeling of triumph he experienced. That very uneasiness, in fact, was behind the triumph, for it indicated to him that the stories he had heard over the years were most likely accurate.
The three of them tied their horses to a post and walked down the single street. San Jardine looked like one of a dozen other villages he had come across in his travels, rather typical for this area, in fact, with its single store and bar, its collection of small, poor homes and its outlying farms.
The only feature that made it different was what stood at the far end of town, the one building he had avoided looking at, and the reason he had come.
A man carrying a rifle stopped to question him, obviously the person in charge of whatever passed for law hereabouts. The man spoke no English, but Kit’s Spanish was good, and he explained who he was and why he was here. At first, the man denied that there was anything unusual about the village and told Kit that his information was mistaken. If there was such a place as he described, San Jardine was not it. But when Kit asked what the building was that lay at the end of the street, and why no homes or farms or other buildings stood anywhere near it, the man broke down, admitting that that land was
Word had it that, fifty years ago, there’d been a church on the spot, and that it had been destroyed by a band of marauders, one of a historical procession that had decimated the population of what had at one time been a thriving community.
Kit looked to the end of the street. Even a church couldn’t change the nature of that land, and this to him was a powerful realization.
Why had people remained here? Kit asked. Why hadn’t all of the families left and moved elsewhere?
The man had no answer, and somehow that seemed the most disturbing thing of all.
There had been no one on the street when he’d arrived, but behind the man to whom he’d been talking, other men with guns had gathered. Kit had the impression that they’d heard the topic of discussion and come out to make sure that he did not try to walk to the end of the street. They seemed fearful of the small building there, as of a primitive god, and bent on keeping people away so as not to rile the forces within.
Kit spoke to the Ute soldiers to either side of him in their own language, and they pulled out their guns and got a bead on the head honcho before them.
“Now I am going to inspect that location,” Kit announced to the villagers, “and I do not wish to be impeded. Do I make myself clear? If any attempt is made to stop me, my men will immediately start firing. They are expert soldiers and will be able to kill several of you before you are able to kill them.”
The man who’d been talking to him looked angry and frightened at the same time. But he lowered his weapon and lowered his head, allowing Kit and the Utes to pass. The other men dispersed, leaving the street, going back into their homes. In moments, the street was clear. The village might as well have been abandoned.
Kit looked over at the Utes. Once again, he saw the fear on their faces. He felt it, too, and the air grew colder as the sun hid behind a cloud. A shadow fell over the land.
They walked past the store. The village, he saw now, was bigger than he had originally thought. Its size was deceptive, because it was shaped like a horseshoe, spread out and back, leaving a short center, everything built away from and around that small structure at the end of the street. He still was not sure what that building could be, but as he approached, as he grew close, he saw that it was a ramshackle cabin, windowless, with a tattered cloth hung over its rough doorway. Smoke seeped out from around the cloth’s edges, smelling of lives, smelling of death, and behind the smoke was an eerie light, a colorless glow that was unlike anything he had ever seen.
He stopped several lengths in front of it. The street had ended, and he was standing before an overgrown patch of brush-covered ground. A narrow footpath led through the scrub and to the cabin door.
As brave as he was, he found himself afraid to enter the cabin.
Something lived in there.
The tattered cloth billowed in an unfelt breeze, and the glow behind the creeping smoke flickered. For the first time in his life, his urge was to turn tail and run, to get away from this village as quickly as he could. But that meant only that this place did have power, that the stories he had heard were true, and he would be forfeiting his duty as an agent of the government if he did not follow through, enter that building and find out whether that power could be used to promote the interests of the United States.
Gathering his courage, he stepped onto the footpath. But when he announced to the Utes that they were going in, the Indian soldiers shook their heads and remained in place. They would do anything else he asked, they said, ride into battle with him against overwhelming forces, but they refused to enter that cabin. He understood, and though he could have had them both executed for such insubordination, he had no intention of doing so. This was beyond the limit for almost any man, and he told them to wait by the end of the street with their guns drawn to make sure that none of the villagers attempted to interfere. This they promised to do, and he steeled himself and strode briskly up the path toward the cabin, his own pistol out and ready.
This close, the smell of the smoke was stronger, an odor heavy with the knowledge of mortality, with the weight of years and places long gone. He was afraid of the smoke, afraid of the smell, afraid of the colorless light within the dilapidated structure that could not have come from any lamp or fire. If he paused, he knew he would not have the fortitude to continue, so Kit marched directly up to the cabin, pushed the tattered cloth aside and stepped over the threshold.
Inside, it was dark, that eerie glow nowhere in evidence, the windowless interior so dim he would have sworn that it was night outside. There did not even seem to be any smoke, though the air was filled with whispers, soft words spoken by unseen presences that came from nowhere, came from everywhere, and made no sense to him at all.
Before him, the single room was meanly furnished—cot, table, chair—though he could make out little more than outlines in the gloom. The only aspect of the cabin that struck him as unusual, beyond the absence of any visible resident, was the odd sense that the interior of the ramshackle structure was older than the outside, and that the room in which he stood stretched far beyond the walls that enclosed it.
Near his ear, one of the whispers spoke his name.
“Hello!” he called. His voice seemed to echo, as though he were in a cave, and it took his brain a moment to realize that the whispers were repeating his cry, mocking him.
This was not what he had expected, and it was not something he could understand. Until this very second, the tactical value of this site in combat had been his sole focus, the idea that had led him here and that had lain in his mind since the first rumors of this village had reached him all those years ago. But his plans seemed foolish now, small. He suddenly realized that the power here could not be used, harnessed or contained. It was too big, too deep, too dangerous. He understood why the villagers kept away from this spot, and he wanted more than anything to get out of this cabin and as far away from here as possible.
A colorless fire sprang up in the center of the room, in a shallow hole he had not been able to see in the dark. It had no fuel, no kindling, but seemed to come from the earth itself, a blaze of indeterminate origin and pallid illumination that revealed words scrawled on the wall in what appeared to be blood, words he had never seen before and did not understand. On the cot, he saw now, was a low mound of whitish powder in the shape of a man’s body.
Panic welled within him as he recognized that the thought on which his mind was focusing was not his own.
Using all of the strength and will he possessed, he stumbled back through the doorway, becoming tangled for one terrifying, heart-stopping moment in the tattered cloth before staggering up the footpath to where the Utes still stood.
It was dark now. He had been inside the cabin for a few minutes only, but in the open air it appeared as though more than an hour had passed. He was breathing heavily, and, grabbing the canteen from its strap around his neck and shoulder, he unscrewed the cap with trembling fingers and drank.
One of the Utes asked him what had gone on inside the cabin, why he had been in there for so long, but Kit shook his head, not wanting to answer. He stared before him at the buildings of the village, arranged
