Tom Pawlik: Beckon

“Apparently their elders made a bargain with Sh’ar Kouhm. If the N’watu could provide her with souls from other tribes, she would leave them in peace.”

Rudy raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t they just move out of the caves altogether? Y’know, find somewhere else to live?”

Running Bear peered at him in the firelight for a moment. Then he spoke in soft, broken English. “Would you give up your home so easily?”

Rudy shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t resort to human sacrifices just to hang on to it. That’s for sure.”

“Look,” Ben interjected, “this is all just a bunch of old stories. I mean, nobody actually believes this stuff anymore.”

Running Bear seemed to grow agitated and responded to Ben’s comment. Ben rolled his eyes again and replied in Caieche.

Jack interrupted their argument. “What’s he saying?”

Ben sighed. “He claims the N’watu took his great-grandmother when his granddad was just a kid. Apparently he saw them. They were like ghosts or something.”

“Wait a minute,” Jack said. “He says his great-grandmother was actually kidnapped by the N’watu?”

Ben shrugged. “Like I said, that’s what he says his grandfather used to tell him. But I think he may have been a little, y’know… few eggs short of a dozen or something. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”

“Were there any other witnesses? Did they try to go after her?”

“I think they just assumed she had run off with another man or gotten killed by a mountain lion or something,” Ben said. “Nobody ever talked about it much.”

“Still,” Jack said, “it’s a pretty compelling story. Does he know where the caves are?”

Running Bear spoke in a heated tone, and Ben appeared to be trying to calm him down.

“He says not to go off looking for the caves,” Ben explained. “He says there’s something evil in that place.”

“No doubt,” Rudy offered in agreement.

Jack reached into his pack and produced the papers from his father’s desk. “Look, my father disappeared somewhere out here twelve years ago, and I’m trying to find out what happened to him.” He pulled out the page with the image on it. “He had this drawing. I think it was some kind of artifact he was searching for. Does this look familiar at all?”

Running Bear’s eyes fixed on the drawing. He seemed intrigued and yet a little sad at the same time. He spoke slowly.

Ben translated. “He says he’s seen this before.”

“He has?” Jack leaned forward. “Where?”

The old man rose from his chair and shuffled over to a shelf on the other side of the room. He returned with a folded piece of cloth, carrying it gingerly in his arthritic fingers, and sat down again. Unfolding the cloth, he revealed a swatch of something that looked like animal hide. He held a narrow strip of soft leather up in the firelight, where Jack could see faded red markings. Several bands of lines connected in parallel and perpendicular designs across the length of the material.

The markings looked nearly identical to the ones in the artifact. As if they were characters from the same alphabet.

Running Bear nodded and spoke.

“He says it’s the language of the N’watu,” Ben said. “His grandfather wrote them down long ago. He claimed to have seen this writing inside the cave where his mother was taken, then wrote it down from memory.”

“His grandfather was inside the cave?” Jack said.

Running Bear’s soft voice replied, and Ben translated.

“His grandfather once told him the story about how he had been inside the cave when he tried to save his mother.”

“Did he tell him where the cave is? Does he know where to find it?”

Running Bear nodded and spoke as Ben translated. “Through the waters at the head of the Little White Eagle. In the cleft of the mountainside.” Ben leaned aside. “I’m pretty sure that’s White Eagle Creek. Just a couple miles north of here.”

Running Bear went on.

“He wants to know where your father saw this figure,” Ben said.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. I just found his papers a couple weeks ago. But this could prove his theories weren’t so crazy after all. If I can find this cave and get pictures of the writing inside it… that would be huge .”

Running Bear spoke in a weary tone.

“He warns you not to go,” Ben said, almost apologetically.

But Jack was having none of it. He wasn’t going to stop for the sake of some old Indian ghost story.

“No way. I can’t quit now.” He turned to Rudy. “I have to find it.”

Rudy held up his hands. “You didn’t say anything about crawling around in caves. I’m claustrophobic.”

“C’mon, Rudy,” Jack said. “You know I can’t do this alone.”

Rudy grunted. “Dude, this trip just keeps getting better and better.”

“Well, I can show you where White Eagle Creek is,” Ben said. “I suppose you can try to follow it upstream and see where it leads. See if there really is a cave up there.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Jack said.

Then Ben went on with a grin. “Of course, you two look like a couple of city boys. Not sure it’s the safest thing for you to do. Not without a guide, anyway.”

“A guide, huh?” Jack raised an eyebrow. “And I suppose you have someone in mind?”

“I sure do.” Ben thumbed his chest. “US Army Rangers for ten years. I’ve lived in the area my whole life. Plus, I’ve even done a fair bit of caving in my day. If you need a guide, I’m your man. Provided the price is right.”

“Price…” Jack rubbed his jaw and peered at the Indian. It would definitely be helpful to have someone on his expedition who was familiar with the area. As long as it fit in his budget. “How much?”

They were beginning to haggle when Running Bear stood up and shook his head. His eyes flared in the firelight.

“If you go… death will find you there.”

Jack and Rudy followed Ben Graywolf along the rocky bank of White Eagle Creek. The stream snaked a winding path down a rough, boulder-strewn slope through the woods. After the recent storms, water was rushing past them in a foamy torrent. The morning air was crisp, and patches of sunlight filtered down through the trees onto the forest floor of damp pine needles.

Through the branches ahead of them, Jack caught glimpses of the looming gray mountains against a magnificent blue sky. They’d gotten an early start, meeting Ben at eight o’clock at the spot where the highway crossed the creek. There was an area off the road where they could park their vehicles and head up on foot, following the creek bed westward.

Jack had to stop several times so he and Rudy could catch their breath. They weren’t nearly as acclimated to the higher elevations as their older Caieche guide. For his part, Ben carried no map or compass, at least none that Jack could see, and appeared to have no pressing need to engage in conversation, either.

After another half hour of walking, Ben finally announced, “We should be getting close now. I can hear the falls.”

Jack, on the other hand, couldn’t hear anything over the stream and his own labored breathing.

Within ten more minutes, they emerged over a ridge onto a broad, wooded shelf at the base of a rocky cliff. A white spray of water poured out from a crevice about fifty feet up like a spigot on the side of a house. It sprayed into a large pool at the base of the cliff before flowing down the creek bed. To one side of the falls, the cliff face was sheer and smooth, but the other side was jagged and uneven, enough to afford a possible way up.

Rudy dug out his minicam to film the waterfall and surrounding area. He zoomed in on the crevice. “Don’t tell me that’s the cave.”