Soul Catcher (11 page)

Katsuk shook his head.

Vince said: “Why the loincloth bit, man?
Aren’t you cold?”

“No.”

“I stopped to blow a little grass. The other
guys must be almost to the bottom by now.” He peered around Katsuk.
“I think I hear them. Hey, guys!” The last came out in a shout.

Katsuk said: “They can’t hear you. They’re
too close to the river.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Katsuk thought:
I must kill him without
anger, an act of irony. I must cut a malignant and venomous thing
from my forest. It will be an event in which the world may see
itself.

Vince said: “Hey, Chief, you’re awfully
quiet. You’re not mad or anything?”

“I am not angry.”

“Yeah ... well, good. You want a little
grass? I got half a lid left.”

“No.”

“It’s high-grade stuff, man. I got it in
Bellingham last week.”

“I do not smoke your marijuana.”

“Oh. What
are
you doing out
here?”

“I live here. This is my home.”

“Come on! In that getup?”

“This is what I wear when I search for a
deformity of the spirit.”

“A what?”

“A thing by which men may know sanity.”

“You’re putting me on.”

Katsuk thought:
I must end it. He cannot
be allowed to go and report that he has seen me.

Vince rubbed his shoulder beneath a pack
strap. “This pack sure is heavy.”

Katsuk said: “You have not yet discovered
that having too much is no better than not having enough.”

Nervous laughter jerked in Vince’s throat.
He said: “Well, I gotta catch up with the others. See you, Chief.”
He hunched his shoulders into the straps, taking the weight of it
off the embankment, stepped past Katsuk. There was obvious fear in
his movements.

Katsuk thought:
I cannot pity. That would
make the earth fall away from beneath my feet. My knife must go
cleanly into this walking youth. He pulled the knife from its
sheath, moved after Vince. The knife must pay homage to his blood
and break open the time of death. Birth must end with death, with
eyes gone dull, memory gone, heart gone, blood gone, all the flesh
gone—the miracle ended.

As he thought, he moved: left hand into
Vince’s hair, yanking the head back, right hand whipping the knife
around and across the exposed throat.

There was no outcry, just the body slumping
back, guided by the hand in the long hair. Katsuk dropped to one
knee, caught the weight of the pack on it, held the jerking figure
upright. A jet of red gushed from the slashed throat, the lucid
color of a young life spurting in a bright fountain onto the
trail—a rose petal spurting, ebbing, softly now and now frothing,
resurgent, the body twitching, then still.

It was done.

Katsuk felt that this moment had been
following him all his life, now to catch up with him.

An ending and a beginning.

He continued to support the body, wondered
how old this young man had been. Twenty? Perhaps. Whatever his age,
it was ended here—the pleasure and the time passing, all a dream
now. Katsuk felt his mind whirling with what he had done. Strange
visions captured his awareness: all a dream, black and hidden, an
evil profile, clouds under water, limbs of air moving with jade
ripples, a green crystal fluid carving traces on his memory.

This earth had green blood.

He felt the weight of the sagging body. This
flesh had been a minor pattern in an overlarge universe. Now it
faded. He allowed the body to fall on its left side, stood, and
peered uphill toward the log where Hoquat lay hidden. It was a
hillside suddenly full of green light as clouds exposed the
sun.

Deep within himself, Katsuk prayed:
Raven, Raven, keep the edge on my hate. 0 Raven, keep me
terrible in revenge. This is Katsuk, who lay three nights in thy
forest, who heeded no thorn, but did thy bidding. This is Katsuk,
thy torch, who will set this world afire.

***

Special Agent Norman Hosbig, Seattle Office,
FBI:

Just because we suspect he may have gone to
some city doesn’t mean we stop searching that wilderness. As of
today, we have almost five hundred people in all phases of the
search over there. We have sixteen aircraft still in the park—nine
of them helicopters. I read in the morning paper where they are
calling it a strange kind of contest, modern against primitive. I
don’t see it that way at all. I don’t see how he could be walking
those trails unseen with all the people we have searching.

***

David had watched the killing, standing up
from his hiding place, his mind raddled by terror. That young hiker
who had been so alive—nothing but a carcass now. Katsuk’s eyes were
fearful things, their gaze hunting through the gloom of the
hillside. Were they seeking another victim?

David felt that Kutsuk’s eyes had been
hidden in some far depth, coming now to the surface—brown and
terrible and so deep from where they had been.

On trembling legs, David crept up the hill
behind his hiding place. He knew his face was contorted with
terror, his breathing all out of pace, coming fast and shallow. But
he had little control over his muscles.

All he wanted was release.

Slowly, he started, moving parallel with the
trail. He had to find those other hikers! At last, he turned
downhill, stumbling over logs and limbs. Movement restored some of
his muscle control. He began to run, emerging from the trees onto a
lower section of the trail.

There was no sight or sound of the other
hikers or of Katsuk.

He was running all out now. There was
nothing left to do but run.

In a trick of the light, Katsuk saw the
running boy—hair flying, a winged head, a slow-motion being of
solid light: ivory with inner brilliance, splendid and golden,
swimming upon the green field of the forest and the air.

Only then did Katsuk realise that he too,
was running. Straight down the slope he went in great gulping
strides. He burst out upon the switchback trail as Hoquat rounded a
corner above him, caught the running boy in full stride, and swept
him to the ground.

Katsuk lay there a moment, catching his
breath. When at last he could speak, his words came out in a wild
drumbeat with little meaning outside the angry syllables
pounding.

“Damn! Damn! Damn! I told you! Stay down
earth ...”

But Hoquat had been knocked unconscious, his
head striking a log beside the trail.

Katsuk sat up, grinning, his anger
evaporated. How foolish Hoquat had appeared—the stumbling flight of
a recent nestling. Raven had, indeed, anticipated everything in the
universe.

There was a bloody bruise on the side of
Hoquat’s head. Katsuk put a hand to the boy’s breast, felt the
heart beating, saw vapor form as the boy breathed. The heart, the
breath ... the two things were one.

Sadness overcame him. Those loggers on the
La Push road! Look what they had done. They had killed Janiktaht.
They had killed this boy beneath his arm here. Not this moment,
perhaps ... but eventually. They had killed Vince, growing cold up
there on the trail. There would be no sons of Vince’s making. No
daughters. No laughter ringing after him. Not now. All killed by
those drunken hoquat. Who knew how many they had killed?

How could the hoquat not understand these
things they did with their own violence? They remained blind to the
most obvious facts, unwilling to see the consequences of their
behavior. An angel-spirit could come down from heaven and show them
the key to their actions and they would deny that spirit.

What would the nine drunken hoquat say if
they saw Vince’s dead flesh up there on the trail? They would
become angry. They would say:
“We didn’t do that!”
They
would say:
“We just had a little innocent fun.”
They would
say:
“Christ! It was just a little klooch! When did a bit of
tail ever hurt one of them?”

Katsuk thought of Vince walking on the
campus—not innocent enough to satisfy Soul Catcher, but naive in
the rightness of his own judgments. A preliminary sacrifice, one to
mark the way.

Vince had judged his own people harshly, had
shared the petty rebellions of his time, but had never sent his
thoughts ahead to seek out a way in his world. He had merely
reacted his way into sudden death.

Katsuk climbed to his feet, threw the
unconscious boy over his shoulder, trudged back up the hill. He
thought:

I must not pity. I must hide Vince’s body
and then go on.
Hoquat stirred on Katsuk’s shoulders, muttered:
“My head ...”

Katsuk stood the boy on his feet, steadied
him. “You can walk? Very well. We will go on.”

***

Psalm of Katsuk: written on the backs of
trail registry blanks and left at Cedar Cabin:

You brought your foreign god who sets you
apart from all other life. He presents you with death as His most
precious gift. Your senses are bedazzled by His illusions. You
would give His death to all the life that exists. You pursue your
god with death, threatening Him with death, praying to take His
deadly place.

You stamp the crucifix across the earth’s
face. Wherever it touches, there the earth dies. Ashes and
melancholy shall be your lot all the rest of your days.

You are a blend of evil and magnificence.
You torture with your lies. You trample the dead. What blasphemy
resides in your deadly pretensions of love!

You practice your look of sincerity. You
become a mask, transparent, a grimace with a skull behind it. You
make your golden idols out of cruelty.

You disinherit me in my own land.

Yea, by the trembling and fear of my people,
I blight you with all of the ancient curses. You will die in a cave
of your own making, never again to hear birdsong or trees humming
in the wind or the forest’s harp music.

***

David awoke in pale dawn light. He was
trembling with cold and damp. Katsuk’s hand gripped his shoulder,
shaking, shaking. Katsuk wore clothes taken from the dead hiker’s
pack: jeans that were too tight for him over the loincloth, a plaid
shirt. He still wore moccasins and the band of red cedar bark
around his head.

“You must awaken,” Katsuk said.

David sat up. A cold, gray world pressed
around him. He felt the damp chill of that world all through his
body. The clothing on Katsuk made him think of the hiker’s death.
Katsuk had murdered! And so swiftly!

That memory conveyed a deeper chill than
anything in the creeping gray fog of the wilderness.

“We will go soon,” Katsuk said. “You hear
me, Hoquat?”

Katsuk studied the boy, seeing him with an
odd clarity, as though the dull gray light around them were
concentrated into a spotlight which illuminated every movement in
the young face.

Hoquat was terrified. Some part of the boy’s
awareness had translated the hiker’s death correctly. One death was
not enough. The ritual of sacrifice must be carried through to its
proper end. Hoquat must not let this awareness rise into his
consciousness. He must know it while denying it. Too much terror
could destroy innocence.

The boy shuddered, a sudden, uncontrollable
spasm.

Katsuk squatted back on his heels, felt a
sudden inward chill, but kept a hand on Hoquat’s arm. The flesh
pulsed with life beneath Katsuk’s fingers. There was warmth in that
life, a sense of continuity in it.

“Are you awake, Hoquat?” Katsuk pressed.
David pushed the man’s hand away, flicked a glance across the
sheathed knife at

Katsuk’s waist.

My knife,
David thought.
It killed
a man.

As though his memory had a life of its own,
it brought up the picture of his mother warning him to be careful
with “that dreadful knife.” He felt hysterical laughter in his
throat, swallowed to suppress it.

Katsuk said: “I will be back in a few
minutes, Hoquat.” He went away.

David’s teeth chattered. He thought:
Hoquat! I am David Marshall. I’m David Morgenstern Marshall. No
matter how many times that madman calls me Hoquat, that won’t
change a thing.

There had been a sleeping bag in the hiker’s
pack. Katsuk had made a ground cover of moss and cedar boughs,
spread the bag over them. The bag had been pushed aside during the
night and lay now in a damp wad. David pulled it around his
shoulders, tried to still the chattering of his teeth. His head
still ached where he had bruised it when Katsuk had hurled him to
the ground.

David thought then about the dead hiker.
After he had regained consciousness and before they crossed the
river.

Katsuk had forced his captive back up the
trail to that bloody body, saying: “Hoquat, go back to where I told
you to hide and wait there.”

David had been glad to obey. As much as he
had wanted
not
to look at the dead youth, his eyes kept
coming back to the gaping wound in the neck. He had climbed back to
the mossy nurse log, hidden his face behind it, and lost himself to
dry sobs.

Then Katsuk, who had called him after a long
time, was carrying the pack. There had been no sign of body or
bloody marks of a struggle on the trail.

They had stayed off the elk track for a time
after that, climbing parallel to it, returning to the trail on the
other side of a high ridge.

At dusk, Katsuk had built a crude cedar-bark
shelter deep in trees above a river. He had brought five small fish
from the river, cooked them over a tiny fire in the shelter.

David thought about the fish, tasting them
in memory. Had Katsuk gone for food now?

They had crossed the river before building
the shelter. There had been a well-marked hiking trail, a bridge
above a flood-scoured bar. The boards of the bridge had been soft
wet with a pocking of slush on the downstream lip, the air all
around full of smoky spray.