Alexander C. Irvine (23 page)

whistle from the boiler had risen to a hurricane scream and Gatty’s words were lost.

He had barely made it to the cargo stacked in the stern before the boiler exploded, the blast wave pinwheeling Archie out over the flat brown river.

When he hit
the water, Archie sucked in an involuntary breath at the shocking cold. The river flooded his mouth and nose, and he panicked, flailing about in the murky water. Which way was up? Forcing his eyes open, he saw sunlight and kicked toward it, his lungs burning and pulse hammering in his ears.

He broke the surface and gulped a deep breath, immediately choking up a stream of dirty water. Wiping hair from his eyes, Archie saw
Maudie,
burning like tinder as she drifted sternfirst in the mainland side of the channel, her deck barely level with the water. The boiler, stack, and cabin were gone, shattered into bits of flotsam that spotted the water around the wreck. Her cargo, too, was gone, either sunk or drifting away.

Gatty’s body hung in the water off
Maudie’s
stern, twisted in the railing and the waving remains of the rudder. His head was underwater. There was no sign of Rufus or the three slaves.

Archie’s boots began dragging him down, and awakening pain from his burns made every move excruciating. Water slopped over his chin as he imagined trying to swim with iron manacles about his ankles; any of the three blacks could be gasping out his life from the muddy bottom, eyes fixed on the same sunlight Archie had seen but unable to reach it. A terrible vision of hopeless dark hands grasping at his feet spurred Archie to action; he got his arms moving and began to swim.

A packing crate floated in front of him, burning along the corner farthest above the water. The flame spread and leapt out onto the water, licking along the ripples Archie made as he stopped to tread water. Something about it was soothing, and he forgot his fear of being dragged under.

Just for a moment, and then it was gone; but Archie saw it. He saw the flames resolve themselves into an image, low and shimmering like reflected sunlight on the brown water. Helen’s face. He spoke her name, reached toward the flickering image, and then it was gone, extinguished as the crate turned slowly over with a hiss and puff of steam.

“Helen,” he said. “Love, what is it?”

The feathet talisman floated to the surface, its brass medallion bobbing on the waves created by his awkward strokes. It turned around once, the feathers brushing against Archie’s chin, then pointed steadily toward the bank of Blennerhassett’s Island.

Archie waited for another sign, some indication of why Helen’s face had formed itself from fire and water and death. What kind of magic was this? Was it a warning, come too late, of
Maudie’s
wreck? Dazed and fearing he’d conjured the image out of shock and guilt, Archie followed the talisman and struck out for a sandy strip of beach a few dozen yards distant. The slumping remains of a dock stood out from the beach’s downriver edge, just a double row of sunken posts with a few crooked boards clinging to them. Archie’s back and shoulders hurt like they were still being steam-cooked; he thought he could feel fresh blisters rising and breaking as he worked across the current, finally catching hold of one of the weathered dock posts and settling his feet on the sandy bottom.

Looking behind him, he saw that
Maudie
was completely gone save for the very tip of her bow, which peeked above the surface in a tangle of brush and fresh debris on the mainland side of the channel. She would lie there caught on a snag until another short-cutting captain either tore out his bottom on her or brought in salvagers to float her down to Cincinnati. Either way, Archie’s short career as a riverman was over. There was no sign on the river of the image he’d seen moments before.

“I don’t understand,” Archie moaned, his teeth beginning to chatter. The soothing lethargy he’d felt just a few minutes before was gone, replaced by a surge of desperate frustrated anger. Jane was in the hands of madmen, and he was stranded on a strip of mud with only the sodden clothes on his back and fleeting visions of his dead wife. He had to find a way to Louisville, and if he were to heed Tamanend’s advice and travel by water he’d have to cross the island and hope that a passing vessel would pick him up. Barnum’s money was gone, a windfall for whoever dredged up
Maudie’s
charred bones.

And come to think of it, Tamanend’s advice hadn’t proved very useful, had it? Archie shivered as he slogged out of the shallows onto the beach, feeling the March wind draw his body heat through the tears in his dripping clothes.
Have to get warm and dry,
he thought.
No inexplicable encounters with Indians this time, just find a roof and get warm. You can’t do Jane any good if you catch a fever and die here.

Helen, what did you want to tell me?

He supposed he was in shock—four men had just died and he’d barely given a thought to finding Rufus. Sorry, old man, he thought. Hope you got clear. Maybe Milt Crowe will come back around and pick you up.

Archie realized he’d spoken aloud, and then that he was deaf. Must have been the explosion, he thought. But his ears didn’t hurt, at least not any more than the rest of him. He hoped it was temporary.

A winding, overgrown path snaked back into the trees from the base of the dock. Before following it, Archie stripped and wrung his clothes dry as best he could. Despite the chilly temperatures, the sun was bright, and he actually warmed a bit as his skin dried. The chill settled over him again as he dressed, but it was nothing a brisk walk wouldn’t stave off until he could locate a roof and, he hoped, a dry bed and change of clothes.

So this is Blennerhassett’s Island, Archie thought as he made his way up a gentle rise and into the denser forest. Harman Blennerhassett had bankrolled much of Aaron Burr’s seditious activity and, after Burr’s arrest, had fled to Louisiana and died, leaving his island estate to fall into disrepair. The mansion had burned in 1811, and Blennerhassett himself had died in 1831. Archie had never understood Blennerhassett’s role, or his interest in the whole affair. Burr’s
Wallam Olum
commentary gave no indication that the old Irishman had known of the Tlaloc cult. Perhaps he had simply been hungry for power and had sought to guarantee himself influence by financing Burr’s bid to become a western emperor.

It wasn’t just Blennerhassett, either. Archie wasn’t absolutely certain of the motives of any of the various parties in this endless, invisible war. Tamanend had said that people create gods, but that gods attain a reality of their own as long as they are worshiped. That might explain the conflict between the Lenape and the chacmool’s people, but both societies had been practically eradicated by the white man. What was left to fight over? Was it really possible for a handful of fanatics to resurrect a forgotten god?

What did the Lenape really want? Were they really so solicitous of the civilization that had destroyed them, or was Tamanend not telling him something?

And none of those questions, even if they could be concretely answered, explained Riley Steen. He certainly believed that the old gods had power—Archie had no doubt of that after the night at the Museum and outside the Brewery—but he didn’t exactly worship, did he? He feared his enemies and used what rituals he could, but Archie couldn’t recall seeing him actually
pray.
Perhaps he too was only in it for the power, and thought he could ride the chacmool to some sort of prominence.

At least I know what I want, Archie thought. No one has offered me riches or power, and I don’t care. I just want to be a father again.

But was that really true? Would he turn down what Steen sought, if it was offered to him?

The sight of a dilapidated mansion ahead broke Archie’s train of thought. Funny, Archie thought. Barnum said it had burned.

He made his way across a muddy field, once a lawn or perhaps vegetable garden but now overgrown with oak and poplar saplings. Archie wished he was better acquainted with edible plants. If this had been a garden, some of the vegetables might have survived, and … but no, it was only March. And unless someone had taken up residence here when Blennerhassett fled south, it was very likely that Archie wouldn’t eat until he managed to secure passage farther down the river. How long before hunger began to seriously debilitate him?

The manor house itself was blocky and squarish, with most of its paint peeled away by thirty-five winters. The roof sagged noticeably in several places, and nearly all of the windows were broken. Off to one side stood a barn, its roof fallen completely in and its doors standing open.

No wagons or carriages were visible, or any other sign that the house was occupied. Archie approached the house and tried the front door. The knob was frozen, no doubt rusted shut. He debated a moment, then went to the nearest ground-floor window. Peering inside, he saw what must have been a parlor, dominated by the hulk of a fortepiano in the opposite corner from the window. A rotting divan flanked by Queen Anne chairs had been set up facing a central table. Everything in the room was covered in leaves and dust.

Archie used his elbow to break out the shards of glass still clinging to the sash, then climbed through the window. In the front hall a stairway led to the second floor; a sitting room, dining room and kitchen occupied the remainder of the ground floor. Archie searched the kitchen and adjoining pantry, but whatever viable foodstuffs Blennerhassett left behind, in this mansion that had supposedly burned to its foundation thirty years before, had long since moldered or been ruined by hungry animals.

The talisman began to throb slowly as Archie climbed the front staircase. He stopped and peered up into the dim hall at the top of the stairs. Could the chacmool have somehow known he would be stranded here and set up an ambush? It seemed absurd, but Tamanend had admonished him to stay dry while traveling by water. Perhaps as long has he’d had a boat between him and the river, Archie had been masked, but when
Maudie
had blown herself to fragments, the chacmool had scented him.

Then what was waiting for him at the top of the stairs?

Archie drew the knife, thanking his lucky stars—if he had any—that it hadn’t been torn loose in the explosion, and crept up the stairs. His hearing was beginning to return and he listened as well as he could for any sound other than the creak of his foot on each step.

The upstairs hall was dark enough that the chacmool itself could have crouched invisibly within arm’s length, but the talisman’s vibration didn’t intensify. Holding the knife out in front of him, Archie stepped cautiously ahead. His eyes began to adjust to the dimness and he saw that just ahead and to his right, a door opened off the hall. Another doorway was barely visible directly opposite the first, on the other side of what looked like a drawing room.

A slow pulse like a heartbeat began to throb in it as Archie approached the door nearest him, over the dining hall on the ground floor. He tested the knob and the door clicked open.

Flinging it wide, Archie stood just outside the jamb, brandishing the knife and bracing for an assault. The door banged off the wall and swung halfway back before squeaking to a halt on rusted hinges. Inside the room, light streamed in through a bank of high windows and a breeze swirled fallen leaves around Archie’s feet. A large desk stood under the windows, swept clean of debris by the breeze. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves occupied every wall, mostly empty; what books remained had been ruined by exposure to the elements. Archie pushed the door aside and stepped into the room, his footsteps muffled by a thick rug. Two reading chairs sat across from the desk, flanking a low table. Behind them were more empty bookshelves, interrupted by a humidor and liquor cabinet.

Archie glanced behind the door and then looked the room over more closely, wondering what might have excited the talisman. There were no places for a man-sized creature to hide, and the only other thing Archie could think of to explain the talisman’s agitation was some sort of artifact Blennerhassett had left behind. Or had the chacmool itself been here? He scanned the shelves and saw nothing but dust and rotted books, and an empty alcove near the windows that might once have held a sculpture. Examining the alcove more closely, Archie found several blobs of what appeared to be quicksilver. He dabbed at one, wondering what could explain such an oddity; perhaps Blennerhassett had pursued medical interests?

The touch of his fingers smeared one blob over to connect with a second. An electric shudder ran from the talisman down Archie’s arm into the liquid, and the blobs rushed together, rippling as if in an earthquake. Several black ants crawled from seams in the woodwork and circled the pulsating blob, marching in exact, almost military, single file.

Ants drawn to quicksilver? Was that something he’d seen before? The light in the room dimmed, curdled as it had on the street in front of the
Herald
that day, and Archie slumped into a sitting position, one finger still thrust into the puddle of mercury.

The light, he thought. Like on the mountain; I’m outside of time again. He felt slow, disconnected.

“Wheeere’s the heeaadd? Very close? Wheeeeere?”

Archie twisted out of the alcove, feeling a nearly audible
snap
as his finger pulled free of the quicksilver. He stumbled against the desk and gained his feet, looking wildly around. The room seemed to fall into place around him again, and he wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t heard the eerie cry.

Heard? Fifteen minutes ago I was deaf as a post.

His eyes fell on a tiny recess above the lintel of the door through which he’d entered. A small statuette sat there, a jade carving of a crawling infant. Archie stepped closer to the doorway and inspected the carving, queerly certain that it was the source of the voice he’d heard.

It was an infant, but there was something inhuman about it as well. Even for a baby’s, its head was huge, and its face was something out of a nightmare. Curled and slitted eyes squinted out over a gaping fanged mouth, and Archie had the unsettling sensation that it was looking at him. The talisman resumed its steady heartbeat throb, and Archie stretched onto tiptoes, reaching for the sculpture.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Still balancing on the balls of his feet, Archie turned and saw a smiling black face hanging upside down in the open window over the desk.
Good God,
he thought,
how did any of them survive the wreck?

The man hooked his fingers on the inside of the window frame and swung in like a trapeze artist, twisting in midair to land on the desk facing Archie. He wasn’t one of the slaves from the
Maudie,
Archie realized, but then who was he?

“Sorry, Johnny,” the black man said. One of his eyes was milk-white, with no trace of pupil or iris. “Didn’t mean to startle, but you got problems.”

“What kind of problems? Who are you?”

“John Diamond, used to be,” the man said, bowing grandly. “Used to be an acrobat, dancer. Now just a dead man who can’t die.”

The talisman had quieted, and Archie wondered if this Diamond person exerted some sort of damping influence on it. “Did you follow me here?” he asked warily.

“Follow, yes; you, no.” Diamond stepped gracefully to the floor. “That’s the problem I was saying. Thing I’m following is following you. You Presto?”

“Presto?” Archie stared blankly at Diamond for a moment before he understood. “Oh—well, Prescott. My name’s Prescott.”

Diamond laughed and slapped his forehead comically. Archie noticed that Diamond’s hand left a visible impression in the skin of his brow. “Prescott, sorry Johnny. I do that. Must be being dead.”

“I suppose so,” Archie said cautiously. Nothing Diamond said made any sense. “Who’s following me? Is it the chacmool?”

“No, no, chacmool’s in Kentucky already. Not exactly who, more what.
Chaneque.
Statue of it, up there.” Diamond pointed at the carving over the lintel.

“You touch that,” Diamond continued, “it’ll come right to you. Sorry Johnny, if it hasn’t already.”

“What—” Archie’s question was cut off by a bone-chilling wail from the hall.

“Verrryy close, the heeeaad!”

Archie jumped away from the door, spinning to face out into the hall. The thing crouched on the balcony rail, barely six feet away, was the jade carving come to life, only much larger. Its head was twice the size of Archie’s own, its infantile body grotesquely bulging with slabs of muscle. Vile breath poured from its pouting mouth between bared fangs. And something about its face was familiar.

Jesus,
Archie thought as he caught sight of the hump deforming its naked back,
it’s the Geek. What in God’s name happened to him?

Before he could move, the
chaneque
sprang on him, digging long fingernails into Archie’s shoulders and knocking him to the floor. Flinging his arms up to ward it off, Archie lost the knife; he grabbed the
chaneque
around the neck with both hands, barely holding its snapping mouth away from his face.

“Oh boy,” he heard Diamond say from across the room.

“Head the brains, Archiee,”
the
chaneque
hissed, its forked tongue flicking across the tip of Archie’s nose.
“Bit you once, this time the brain—yum yum yum.”