Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

When it happened, it hit like a wall. The second front of the storm came in. I knew it was just the barometric pressure, but it still felt like I was being inhaled by that giant blue devil on the cover of Saizarbitoria’s book. The exhaling riptide came quickly, and I watched it bend the trees like a sweeping claw as it topped the extended northern backbone of Bald Ridge.

It was like the winter had shattered, and the shards were now blowing in my face, small bits of the last season, blasted and blown.

My eyelids were starting to freeze, and I remembered the amber-tinted goggles that were hanging around my throat. I fumbled to pull them up as I climbed and concentrated on just putting one foot in front of the other as I pushed up the last part of the hillside trail where I’d last seen the three. Every time I looked away from my boots I’d stumble and veer from the path, so I tried to focus on their tracks. It was only when I got to the point where Shade had called me that I almost stumbled over the huge man in the grizzly bear hide. He was sitting on a boulder with the lance balanced between his knees, his back to the storm, his moccasined feet stretched out onto the path.

His booming voice carried above the keening wind that bucked me sideways as I stood above him.

“He left this for you.”

In the surrealistic amber hue of the blowing snow, the giant sat holding a small human femur in his gigantic hands.

“You know, when the Iichihkbaahile formed people, we used to have ears at the back of our heads so that we could hear if anything was sneaking up from behind.”

I’d been listening to Virgil’s galloping monologue for about ten minutes now. “Does that include white people?”

“I suppose. Even with all your faults, you’re people too, right?”

“Right.” I watched through the bizarre view afforded by my goggles as the massive grizzly skin swayed along the trail, the hind claws dragging across the snow as if the White Buffalo was packing a bear in a fireman’s carry.

“The reason they got moved to the sides was because while he was working, us people kept moving our heads back and forth to see what the Iichihkbaahile was doing.” He paused on the trail for a second, and I almost ran into him. “Doesn’t that sound like something white people would do?”

“Uh huh.”

“Anyway, now we only know what goes on when it’s right beside us.” He’d hung back a moment, just long enough for me to hear the statement, but I said nothing in return, so he went ahead and we shambled our way across the hill adjacent to the frozen surface of Lake Marion. The giant was providing a partial wind block as the ferocity of the storm blew down the ridge at our left and followed the contours of the valley into our faces.

Personally, I was glad for the insulation.

Virgil had handed the bone to me as if it had little significance, asked me what I thought it meant, and then started off as if this had been his plan all along.

I found it hard to believe that he was their guide; more than likely that portion of Raynaud Shade’s story was, like the money, simply leverage to get the others to follow wherever he led-but where was that? If Virgil really didn’t have any connection with these people, then why had he reappeared and taken up my cause in pursuing them? It was impossible that he knew about his grandson, which meant there was no personal stake in all of this for him. He’d helped me enormously a few months back and had even gotten himself seriously injured in the process. Why was he chancing that again?

I stumbled on the slick surface of one of the rounded stones along the shore. It was hard to keep up with Virgil’s extended stride. One of the promises I made myself was that I wouldn’t be the one to tell the man about the fate of his grandson; it would’ve been like pulling the trigger on an avalanche.

At least I now knew what was in the duffel, but why would Shade have taken the remains of the boy with him? Why had Shade left the bone for me on the boulder? What could he possibly have hoped to gain from antagonizing me any further? Did he know of the connection between Virgil and the boy he’d killed? Had he left the bone for Virgil and not so much for me? Did he even know Virgil existed?

There was a thicket of trees just off the path on a peninsula that divided the two main parts of the lake that provided a remarkable amount of cover. Virgil pulled up short under the snow-covered overhang and sat on a fallen log, turned, and looked at me. “I thought you might need some more help.”

I nodded and stamped my feet, allowing some of the snow I’d collected on my snowshoes to fall off, and was just thankful to be out of the wind. “I figured.” I could feel the weight of the leg bone in the inside pocket of my jacket, along with the weight of the words I was trying not to speak. I settled on some others as I looked out at the lake from the relative shelter of the trees. “We must be getting up close to ten thousand feet.”

“They will rest before they reach the final ridge, so we will also rest.” His two heads turned, and he looked through a narrow opening at the table-flat distance between the ridges that were as tall as skyscrapers. “What is it the whites call this lake?”

Slipping the rifle off my shoulder and lowering the goggles, I came over and sat on the log with him. “Marion.”

“Hmm… I call it Dead Horse.” He paused for a moment, and it was a pause I was used to, the pause that a lot of people have before they tell someone with a badge something. “There was a party of elk hunters up here doing a little fishing last fall, and they had their horses tied off to a group of dead pines down by the rocks.” He flipped a massive paw from the cloak. “A bear came down from the ridge over there and started circling toward the horses while those elk hunters were fishing over this way. The horses went crazy and most of them pulled free, but there was one that was tied up pretty good. He kept yanking on that lead until finally it broke off the base of the trunk with a bunch of the rocks still attached to the roots. The horse bolted, trying to get away from the bear, but the dead tree fell in the lake and dragged the horse in after it. You could see him fighting to get loose from the halter, but he just disappeared into that water, kicking the whole way down.”

I stamped my feet again, seriously trying to keep them from freezing. “What’d the hunters do?”

“Oh, after the bear was killed they fooled around and built a kind of half-assed raft and tried to get the horse because it had some expensive tack on it.”

“How’d that work out?”

“One of them drowned.”

I looked at him. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope; watched it happen-big like you. He went down but never came back up.” He gestured with his lips toward one of the ridges to our east. “Saw it all from right over there.”

“What’d the hunters do then?”

“They got the hell out of here.”

“They left him?”

The giant looked down at me as if to discern which particular village was missing its idiot. “They already lost one horse, one bear, and one man; nobody else wanted to go.” He actually yawned. “Can’t say that I blamed them.”

I glanced out at the lake. “The man and the horse are still down there?”

“Yeah; the bear, too.”

“Did anybody report it?”

“You’d be in a better position to know that than I would.” He took a deep breath and tried looking toward the ridge above us to the north. “Different rules up here. Good for the water spirits, though. Not much water in the high country, and they need the company. That or the Water Monsters took them in revenge for their defeat at the hands of the Thunderbirds.” He glanced at me. “They had the help of a human hunter, you know.”