Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

Thon of a bith I curth thith groun I curth thith groun may it forever be damned may it rain blood for my blood guth for my guth damn thith evil groun—

He fell slowly, gargling and twitching in the bloody dust.

As the wind abated, as the dust settled and vision slowly returned, nothing remained but dead white men. The Cheyenne dead, the dead horses, all were gone. Only the endless grass now, stretching from horizon to horizon. And then a lone figure could be seen rising from a brushy fold in the earth a hundred yards downhill—a boy, previously hidden, who now staggered up in terror and ran across the empty prairie, his little figure fading into the orange glow of the horizon until he could be seen no more.

And then, silence.

Corrie jumped as Pendergast’s eyes flew open, silvery and luminous in the twilight. The hour was up, and she had been about to rouse him. She’d almost woken him earlier, when the birdsong suddenly stopped; but within a minute or two it had resumed and her anxiety had faded. She stood, unsure for a moment what to say. It was now dark under the trees and the muggy night air was filled with the sound of rasping insects.

“Are you all right?” she finally asked.

Pendergast rose, brushing the leaves, dust, and grass off his coat and pants. His face looked drawn, almost as if he was ill.

“I am fine, thank you,” he answered. His voice was toneless.

Corrie hesitated. She desperately wanted to know what he had seen or discovered, but she found herself afraid to ask.

Pendergast checked his watch. “Eight o’clock.”

He swiftly collected his documents, papers, and notes, and began striding down the track toward the car. She followed, stumbling in her effort to keep up. He was already in the passenger seat, waiting, when she reached her own door and fumbled in the twilight with the handle.

“Please take me back to the Kraus place, Miss Swanson.”

“Right. Okay.”

The car engine turned over, turned again, rattled and shook into life. She turned on the headlights and crept back down the bumpy track.

After a few minutes, she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Well?” she asked. “How’d it go?”

Pendergast’s eyes turned to her, glistening strangely in the night.

“I saw the impossible,” was all he said.

Thirty-Nine

T he light faded and twilight crept into the air. The silent leaves disclosed, in the open area between the mounds, infrequent glimpses of the man and the girl. They had been talking, their low voices a murmur at this distance, but now there was only silence. The man had lain down and the girl was now sitting on a rock maybe twenty yards away, once in a while getting up to look around. The light had died in the west and only a faint glow lay over the landscape, rapidly turning to night.

The cornfields, dark and still, stretched out beyond the copse of trees. A star had appeared. From his place of concealment, the watcher looked for another star, found it. Then another, and another.

His eyes turned back to the figure on the ground. What in the world was Pendergast doing? Lying there, silently, like a corpse. Two hours had passed—two hours, wasted. It was well after seven o’clock. And now that Globe reporter, Joe Rickey, was soon going to be coming up against his deadline. Not to mention Ludwig’s own deadline for the next edition of the Courier. Was this some kind of psychic crap? New Age communication with the spirits? Perhaps there was a story here after all, only it wasn’t the story he was after. Still, it was the only story around, and he wasn’t going to move until he saw it through.

Smit Ludwig shifted his cramped limbs, yawned. The night crickets stopped chirping at the movement, then resumed: a peaceful, familiar sound. The whole landscape was familiar to him. He had spent his boyhood up at these mounds, playing Cowboys and Indians with his brother or swimming down in the creek. They’d even camped up here a couple of times. The tale of Harry Beaumont and the Forty-Fives, the fact that the Mounds had a sinister reputation, only added to the boyish sense of adventure. He could remember one night in August, camped here, watching the shooting stars. They’d counted to a hundred and then quit. His brother had left Medicine Creek, was now a retired grandfather in Leisure, Arizona. That was a different era back then. Mothers never thought twice about letting their kids run off and play all day long out of sight. Today it was different. The ugly modern world had come to Medicine Creek, bit by bit. And now, these killings. A part of him was glad Sarah hadn’t lived to see this. Even if they found the killer, the town would never be the same.

Ludwig peered again through the gloaming. Pendergast was still lying on the ground, totally motionless. Even a sleeping person shifted once in a while. And nobody slept like that, perfectly straight, legs together, hands folded on the chest. Christ, he was still wearing his shoes. It was very bizarre.

He cursed under his breath. Should he just stand up and interrupt them, ask them what was going on? But somehow he couldn’t do that. He’d waited this long, he’d wait to see what happened when—

Abruptly, he saw Pendergast rise and dust himself off. Ludwig quickly shrank back into the deepest shadows. There was a murmuring of voices, then without further ado the two started walking back toward their car.

Ludwig swore again bitterly. It had been utter folly to follow Corrie: a self-delusion, born of an attempt to help a cub reporter and to find his own new angle on the story. Now the story was gone, the kid would be in trouble, and next day’s Courier would be left high and dry.

He waited for them to leave, bitterness continuing to rise. What was the hurry? There was no story to write up, nobody to go home to. He might as well just sit here all night. Nobody would miss him or his paper . . .

But Ludwig’s tolerance for self-pity was limited, and before long he, too, had risen. He’d hidden his car well behind Corrie’s, down the road and in the corn, where he knew they would not see it on their way out. He dusted himself off and looked around. The light was now completely gone and the wind had started to pick up—wind at dusk was a sure sign of a coming storm. The leaves started to rustle above his head, then thrashed under a sudden gust. It was very dark, the moon now covered by quick-moving clouds.

He saw a flash of lightning and waited, counting. A faint rumble reached him after almost half a minute.

The storm had a ways to come still.

Hunching forward against the rising wind, he walked toward the spot where Pendergast had lain. There might be something there, some clue as to what he was doing. But there was nothing, not even a faint impression. Ludwig drew out his notebook to jot down a few notes, but then stopped himself. Who was he kidding? There was no story here.

Suddenly, the air seemed full of sound: rustling grass and leaves, sighing branches, swaying trees. The smell of humidity and ozone came to him, mingled with the scent of flowers. Another faint rumble of thunder.

He’d better hurry back and break the bad news to the kid.

It was so dark now that he wondered briefly if he could follow the old track. But he’d been down it a thousand times as a child, and childhood memories never died. He walked down the path, huddled against the wind. Leaves blew past him and a flying twig got caught in his hair. The rush of wind was almost pleasant after the weeks of heat and stillness.

He paused, aware of a new sound to his right. The rustle of an animal, perhaps.

He waited, took a step, another—and then he heard the distinct crackle of dry leaves underfoot.

But not under his foot.