The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7) (11 page)

“Ah,” Victor said, “let me compare this to my book, will
you?”

“Go ahead,” Steven said. Victor rose from his chair and
removed a volume from one of his library shelves. It was large and had a bright
red leather spine. He took the book over by the window, where there was a small
table and more light. He began flipping through the book, stopping to compare
the image on the phone with the images he found on the book’s pages.

He stopped on one page, reading. “You should take a look at
this,” he said, waving Steven over.

Steven looked over Victor’s shoulder at the book on the
table. It was a hand drawing of an Agimat, surrounded by text. Its markings
were the same as his picture. There was another drawing next to it of something
small and rectangular. It had similar markings.

“Do you think this might be it?” Victor asked.

“Yes, that’s it,” Steven said. “But what’s that next to it?”

Victor pointed at the small rectangle. “This?” he asked.

“Yes,” Steven said.

“That, my young man, is the other half of the Agimat.”

“What?” Steven asked, confused.

“The other half,” Victor repeated. “This particular Agimat’s
power is split over two pieces. And it looks like it was a pretty powerful one,
too.”

Victor read the text surrounding the drawings. It looked like
a strange language to Steven, not unlike sections of Roy’s book that he
couldn’t read. When Victor was done scanning the page, he handed the phone back
to Steven and took the book with him back to his chair.

“According to this, the Agimat was the first created by a
member of a Trappist monastery in the Philippines. The fluids of twelve aborted
fetuses were used in its creation, which accounts for why it’s so powerful. The
monk who made it was gifted, and the Agimat was considered so beautiful and remarkable,
a Bishop requested that it be sent to Rome for examination. It never arrived; it
was stolen from the person who was carrying it. It was then sold and came under
the control of Aka Manah, who, along with two other demons, used the power of
the object to twist its properties to their purposes. That’s one of their
favorite pastimes, desecrating and perverting objects.”

“So it
is
his,” Steven said, “but only because he
stole it.”

“Sounds like it,” Victor said. “The Agimat consists of two
parts; the necklace, and its brother, the wooden piece embedded under the
skin.”

“Whoa,” Roy said. “Under the skin?”

“It’s a very thin piece of wood, almost so thin you’d think
it was a thick parchment. Filipinos use a knife to lift up a piece of their
skin, embed the fragment, and let it heal over. The two work in harmony with
each other, the amulet hanging from their neck, and the wooden piece under
their skin. You need both for the Agimat to work.”

“That’s what he was after,” Steven said. “The piece in the ax
man’s skin. It’s at the bottom of the pit. That’s why he wanted to know where
the pit was.”

“Why didn’t he just send us back in to get it?” Roy asked. “I
get that he was scared of the dam, but he could have kept Eliza ill and forced
us to retrieve the wooden part from the pit, right?”

“No, he wouldn’t have,” Victor said. “It was better for him
to have you think things were done and over. Too risky to send you after it.”

“Risky?” Eliza asked. “How?”

“Because this Agimat, in the hands of someone like you, young
man, sorry, I forgot your name again…”

“Steven.”

“Yes, Steven, I’m sorry – Steven, in your hands, it’s
dangerous. Too dangerous for him to risk you getting it, even though you may
not have known what it was.”

“How?” Steven asked.

“This Agimat doesn’t revert to its previous owner, as he
suggested. It reverts to the person with the embedded half. If you had that
half, and for some reason he lost control of the Agimat, it would revert to
you, giving you both halves. Then you’d have its power. I’m guessing that, in
the hands of someone marked like you, both halves would be real trouble for
him, and he knows it.”

“And he probably knew we were working with Judith, and that
she’d never tell us about this,” Roy said.

“Probably,” Victor said.

“If he was too wary of the dam to get the Agimat in the first
place,” Victor said, “he won’t go get the other half by himself. He’ll send
someone in to get it for him. Someone he tricks, or blackmails, or hires. If
you were to get the other half before he does…”

“Yes?” Steven asked. “What?”

“Well, you came to me to help you figure out how to deal with
this demon, right?” Victor asked.

“Yes,” Steven said. “Preferably kill. But anything that hurts
him, I’m willing to do.”

“I can’t promise you that the Agimat will kill him,” Victor
said. “But if you were to get the wooden half before he does, and we embed it
in you, you’d achieve a stalemate with him, at the very least. And if the
necklace reverts to you at some point, you’d have the complete Agimat, and
you’d be able to figure out what it does. You may be able to use it against
him.”

“Or it may turn me into a religious freak, swinging an ax,”
Steven said.

“No,” Victor said, “I doubt that. That happened because the
man who had it was deranged to begin with, prone to religious zealotry. You
don’t appear to be the type. I presume you do not believe you can kill someone
and the Agimat will bring them back?”

“No, I do not,” Steven said. “We know for sure that isn’t one
of its powers.”

“But it does do something so powerful this demon doesn’t want
you to have both halves,” Victor said. “Even you touching the wooden half is
too risky for him, since he knows it sets you up to receive it, if it ever
reverts.”

“What triggers the reversion?” Roy asked.

“Could be any number of things,” Victor said. “Becoming
physically lost, stolen, passing through a barrier of some kind. There might
even be an invocation that would cause it to revert, which is something we
should investigate.”

“What if he destroys his half?” Steven asked. “Couldn’t he
just burn the necklace?”

“He can’t destroy it or change it without both halves,”
Victor said. “So you see, if you get that wooden half before he does, and we
get it embedded in you, you’ll have your stalemate. He won’t risk it reverting
to you. My guess is he’ll hide the Agimat away, and you’ll never hear from him
again.”

“I say we go get it,” Roy said. “Right now.”

“You saw the pit when you were trancing,” Steven said to Roy.
“Any idea how deep it is?”

“No, didn’t see down it,” Roy said. “We should take a rope
and a winch.”

“Bring it back here,” Victor said, “so I can embed it in you.
You can’t do it yourself, you’ll need my help. Once you get it away from the
dam, you’ll be at the demon’s mercy until you get onto the Coupeville ferry.
From there, it’s water the whole way here. Wait, I’m going to give you
something.”

Victor got out of his chair and walked to a small desk in the
corner. He pulled out a drawer, and removed something wrapped in a dark black
cloth. He unwrapped it as he walked back to Steven.

“Here, take this,” Victor said. “I’m retired, and this place
is protected, so I can afford to loan it to you.”

“What is it?” Steven asked.

Victor handed him a small flat rock, about the size of a quarter.
It looked completely ordinary, but when he examined it closely he saw that
there was a small hole in the rock on one side. He held the rock closer to his
eyes, and he could see small gears and wheels inside, spinning like an old
watch. “My father gave me that, and I want it back. It’ll camouflage you from
the demon. You didn’t think it right to tell me that something truly
devastating had happened to you because of this demon, but I can detect that it
happened. You’ll need protection from him. This should do it. It’ll protect all
three of you if you stay close together. That way he won’t be able to torture
one of you to force you to give him the wooden half.”

“I’ll make sure you get it back,” Steven said. “And thank
you.”

“Go, hurry,” Victor said. “If he gets it first, it won’t matter.”

“Are we going home first, or straight up to Diablo?” Steven
asked as they crossed from Port Townsend to Coupeville in a small ferry.

“Straight up,” Roy said. “I’ve got a winch at home but
there’s no time. We can pick one up at a hardware store on the way there.”

“What’s the plan? Who’s going down into the pit?” Eliza
asked.

“I will,” Roy said.

“No, I will,” Steven said. “You’ll operate the winch. I
wouldn’t know how to work it.”

“We’ll need flashlights, too. It’ll be dark by the time we do
this,” Eliza said.

“We can get those at the hardware store,” Roy said.

“I wonder if the object he described is at Eximere?” Eliza
asked. “The one that could tell you exactly what your markings do, Steven?”

“It was,” Steven said, “until I gave it to Aka Manah. It was
on his list.”

“Damn,” Eliza said. “Of course he would want that object!”

“The more I think about it, the more I realize his list was
just a way to clear anything that might be anti-demon from our control,” Steven
said. “They weren’t his at all, he just saw a potential problem when he saw me
with the planchette, and went on a fishing expedition. I should have only given
him one or two things.”

“You said he would have known,” Roy said.

“As Victor said, demons lie,” Steven replied. “Maybe I should
have taken the chance.”

“You’re forgetting that I was in the hospital,” Eliza said.
“Sick as a dog.”

“That’s right,” Steven said. “I wasn’t going to put you at
risk. It didn’t even enter my mind to hold back on some of the items he wanted
until Victor told us about that object. I’m just second-guessing myself.”

“The real worry now,” Roy said, “is if the wooden half of the
Agimat is still in that pit, and if it is, who’s trying to get to it before we
do. Who knows what creature he might send in to retrieve it. Wish we had
weapons.”

“The EM gun is still in the trunk, isn’t it?” Steven asked.

“Yes, but I doubt he’ll send a ghost to get it,” Roy said.
“What we need is my 9mm, or a shotgun.”

“We don’t know if they’d work, either,” Steven said. He
remembered when Michael had caused Roy’s gun to jam, rendering it useless.

“I’d feel better if I had them,” Roy said.

“Well, we don’t have time to get them,” Steven said, starting
up the car as the ferry pulled into the Coupeville terminal. He wound his way
up Whidbey Island, over Deception Pass, and through Burlington, where they
stopped at a hardware store and picked up supplies. After a quick stop for
food, they continued on, arriving in Diablo an hour later.

Roy directed Steven to a pull off near the pit, from his
memory of the trance. Once they’d parked the car far enough off the road that
they weren’t concerned it would be spotted, they removed their backpacks from
the trunk, packed them, and followed Roy as he walked into the small stretch of
forest at the base of a tall cliff. The underbrush was thick, and Steven found
himself wishing he’d brought a machete.

“He hauled these bodies all the way here?” Steven said,
stepping over fallen trees.

“It wasn’t quite as overgrown in the trance,” Roy said. “The
brush was thinner. This just tells you no one ever comes in here.”

Roy pressed on, leading them around boulders and through
areas tangled with fallen branches and tall weeds. It was getting dark and
Steven was about to remove a flashlight from his backpack when Roy stopped at a
rock outcropping. He walked around to the back side of the rocks, and waved for
them to follow.

“How deep does it go?” Eliza said, looking down over the edge
through the hole. It was about eight feet wide, with jagged edges. A tree had
fallen over the opening, making the access smaller.

“I don’t know,” Roy said. “Now that we’re here, why don’t we
enter the River and check it out, to see if we’ve brought enough rope?”

Standing around the top of the pit, they closed their eyes
and dropped into the flow. Steven saw Roy drifting toward the pit opening, and
he followed. Eliza was right behind.

The pit wasn’t too deep – after twenty feet it turned on an
angle and came to a stop.

No bodies,
Steven said, looking around at the pit’s floor.
There
should be bones. Nothing’s here.

Look,
Eliza said.
Over here.

They followed Eliza to a corner of the pit’s floor where it
opened into a small tunnel, with a ceiling just high enough to reach with your
hand stretched overhead.

I’m having trouble seeing in this tunnel,
Eliza said as they moved down it.
It’s
too dark. We’ll have to explore it on foot, with flashlights.

Well, at least we know we’ll be able to get in and out with
rope,
Roy said.
I
don’t think we’ll need the winch. Ready to drop out?

They all left the River. Steven felt a small slice of pain
shoot up the back of his neck, a familiar symptom when he exited the flow.

“So no bodies, and a tunnel,” Steven said as they regained
their bearing at the top of the pit. “We go down and explore the tunnel, I
presume.”

“Maybe animals dragged the bones further into the cave?”
Eliza suggested.

“Any animal that was down in that pit wouldn’t be getting
out,” Roy said, “unless there’s another entrance somewhere.”

“We should keep an eye out for the Agimat half regardless,”
Steven said. “All that we know is he threw himself into the pit, with the ax.
He likely decomposed at the base, and the wood might have fallen out and be on
the ground somewhere, even though the bones are gone.”

Roy secured the rope to a nearby tree, and then they
descended into the pit one by one, Steven going first, then Eliza, and finally
Roy.

They turned on their flashlights and searched the bottom of
the pit. They divided the area into thirds and began methodically going through
everything they found on the ground.

After twenty minutes Eliza had finished her area. “Nothing,”
she said, standing up and stretching her back.

“Me either,” said Roy. “There’s nothing that would even
indicate that bodies were dropped here. No clothes, jewelry, nothing. A few
animal bones, but that’s about it.”

Steven stood up, and raised his hands over his head,
stretching out his back. “Me either. Alright, the tunnel.”

Steven led the way to the tunnel, then stepped in with the
others following. Eliza walked to the wall and used her flashlight to examine it.

“Dug out,” she said. “Not natural.”

“Which means it might not be very stable,” Roy said. “Keep
your wits about you.”

After walking twenty feet they found a large boulder that ran
from the floor of the tunnel to the ceiling. The path curved around the rock to
the left, then continued on in the same direction.

They walked another fifty feet, the tunnel heading straight
ahead, deeper into the side of the mountain.

“I’m feeling a little light headed,” Eliza said. “Like I’m
not getting enough air.”

“There’s something up ahead,” Steven said. “Looks like
another rock.”

This time the tunnel bent to the right, going around the rock
and continuing on.

“Light up ahead!” Steven said to the others.

They followed him quickly as he emerged into the pit.

“Hey!” Eliza said. “Nice trick.”

“Did we make a loop somehow?” Roy asked.

“There were no junctions,” Steven said. “We walked straight
in, and suddenly we’re back out here.”

“Let’s do it again,” Eliza said. “I’ll stay in the River this
time.”

They reentered the tunnel with Eliza between them. They
rounded the rock to the left, then continued on.

“Up ahead, where I said I felt light headed,” Eliza said.
“Something there.”

They walked another twenty feet and stopped.

“You might as well both drop in,” Eliza said, “and see what
we’re dealing with.”

Steven and Roy entered the River, and saw Eliza pointing to a
dark red mist that hung in the air ahead of them. It was thick enough that it
blocked their flashlights from illuminating anything beyond it.

That’s it,
Eliza said.
That’s what turns you around. You walk into
that, and next thing you know, you’re walking back out.

Genius,
Steven said.

There’s movement beyond,
Roy said.
I can sense it.

I wonder if you can pass through while in the River?
Eliza asked. She moved forward into
the mist, then passed through it to where it was quite dense.

So far so good,
she said. She kept walking, and was soon out of sight. She
reappeared within another minute, walking back at them through the mist.

Dirteaters,
she said.
Several of them.  They’ve hollowed out a good
section inside. I think if we drink some protection, we can make it through
physically. Did either of you bring some?

I’ve got a thermos in my backpack,
Roy said, and dropped out of the
River. He located the protection and they each took a couple of swallows.

“Let it sit for a moment,” Eliza said. “Once it’s fully
absorbed I think we’ll be able to walk right through.”

“What are dirteaters?” Steven asked.

“We’ve run into them in California,” Eliza said. “People like
to employ them to dig for things. Of course we don’t allow dirteaters inside
our barrier.”

“Do you think these dirteaters are our murdered family?” Roy
asked.

“Very possibly,” Eliza said. “Someone found them and put them
to work.”

“But they were dead,” Steven said. “They reanimated them?”

“Yes,” Eliza said, stretching her hands and arms as she felt
the protection kicking in. “They were turned into dirteaters. There’s nothing
left of the original person’s mind. No personality, no thought. They just dig, endlessly,
consuming dirt. Whenever they run into something other than dirt or rocks, it
goes into a bag or bucket. Someone comes along and collects the bucket, hoping
for gold or silver, that kind of thing. It’s a cheap way to mine, since the
dirteaters keep going until you destroy them or they destroy themselves by
tunneling under a boulder. They’re not smart.”

“So this pit is an enterprise for someone,” Steven said.

“Most likely,” Eliza said. “Ready to walk through?”

“Yes,” Roy said. “I’m all juiced up.”

“Let’s go,” Steven said, and Eliza led them into the mist. The
mist gradually became thicker and thicker, and at one point Steven couldn’t see
in any direction. He felt panic rising, but he tamped it down and kept moving,
following Eliza. Eventually the mist thinned out and he found himself in a
hollowed-out room with tunnels leading in all directions.

“Where are they?” Steven asked.

“Down the tunnels,” Eliza said. “Look, here’s the bag where
they deposit what they find.” She walked over to the edge of the room where a
large canvas bag was sitting against the dirt wall of the room. She opened it
up to show the others. “See?”

While Eliza held her flashlight on the contents of the bag,
Steven and Roy looked in. He saw a number of nuggets and other objects in the
bottom of the bag.

“So basically, someone came along, found the bodies, and put
them to work,” Steven said. “An opportunist.”

“That’s what I’m guessing,” Eliza said.

“Sure stinks of Jurgen,” Roy said. “But we know he’s out of
the picture.”

“We didn’t see him die, Dad. He might have recovered.”

“I doubt it.”

“Do either of you have a mirror?” Steven asked.

“A mirror?” Eliza said.

“I still have the one I saved from Oregon,” Roy said. “In my
backpack.”

“You mean the one you stole off the wall in the bathroom,”
Steven said.

“I saved it,” Roy said defensively. “It’s a good mirror.”

“Let’s find one of these dirteaters and check for a
signature,” Steven said.

“Come on,” Eliza said, leading them down one of the tunnels.
They stopped after ten feet, where the tunnel seemed to abruptly end except for
a sixteen inch tall crack in the earth at about knee level. They knelt down and
Eliza shined her light into the crack.

Wedged three feet into the crack was a body, twisting
slightly as it slowly inched forward, deeper into the crack. Eliza moved her
light and the face of the body came into view. The flesh was blue and purple; putrefaction
had clearly been underway before the reanimation occurred. From the size of the
body, Steven guessed it was one of the ax man’s little girls. She was using
fingers that were nothing but bone from the top knuckle to the tip to scrape
dirt into her mouth, and slowly chewing. When she sensed the light on her face,
she turned and snarled.