The Vanishing (22 page)

She understood for the first time why people said that power was the ultimate aphrodisiac. It was heady stuff, being with someone who shared her views and possessed the means to act on them.

The food came, they ate, but they might as well have been dining at McDonald’s for all the attention she paid her meal. They talked about race and poverty, and she admitted that most of her clients were from Latin America and that many of them barely spoke English. Defensively, she said that she received great satisfaction from helping people from other countries establish a foothold in the United States. She braced herself, expecting to hear an antiimmigrant speech. She got a lot of tirades on that subject these days. They all did.

But Lew surprised her.

‘‘People don’t realize it,’’ he said, ‘‘but America needs a constant influx of immigrants to remain economically healthy.’’ He smiled. ‘‘I know what you’re thinking, and as an employer, of course, I appreciate the cheap labor. But from a historical perspective, political boundaries are a recent invention. For thousands of years, large groups of people have migrated according to shifting weather patterns or fluctuations in food supply or encroaching enemies. Essentially, they went where the jobs were. The same is true today. And for Americans to get so worked up over men and women who are merely trying to work is ridiculous.’’

She said nothing as he continued on, merely watched him. Lew was older than she was by a good ten . . . fifteen . . . maybe even twenty years. She had never before dated a man more than three years her senior and had never had any respect for younger women who went out with rich older men. But she found herself attracted to him.

By the time they left the restaurant it was late. He wanted to extend the evening by going to some nightspot or other, but she was tired and told him she had to work tomorrow. There was a moment of awkwardness on the sidewalk outside, when he leaned forward to kiss her and she inadvertently stepped backward and away from him at the same time. But then she moved forward and into place, and the two of them merged together. She pulled away feeling slightly light-headed and more than a little aroused.

She was glad that she’d driven herself.

They made a date for Saturday. The whole day. It was a big step for her, but she felt proud of herself for taking it. Either they would have a wonderful time together and end the day far closer than they were now—or they would tire of each other and their mutual interest would disappear like smoke in the air. It was all or nothing. She’d either soar or fall flat on her face.

But that was what had been missing from her life: risk. And it felt good to be taking that gamble, to lay herself on the line after the years she’d spent in emotional hibernation.

They kissed again, a shorter, more casual good-bye; then Lew’s limo pulled up to the curb, and a driver got out to open the door for him. ‘‘Are you sure you don’t want a ride?’’ he asked. ‘‘I could send someone back for your car.’’

She waved him away. ‘‘No, thank you. I’ll see you Saturday.’’

He smiled brightly. ‘‘Saturday it is.’’ He got into the car and waved good-bye before the driver closed the door. Seconds after the limo had pulled into traffic, a valet arrived with her own worn Celica—an incongruous combination if she ever saw one. Taking her keys from the uniformed young man, she was grateful that her car had not been brought out before Lew’s.

She didn’t know how much she was supposed to tip, so, embarrassed, she took two dollars out of her purse, handed them to the valet, quickly got inside the car and drove off.

She analyzed the evening all the way home, going over what she’d said, what he’d said, trying to determine if she’d made any serious faux pas.

Things had gone very well, Carrie finally decided.

The telephone was ringing as she opened the front door. She quickly closed and locked it, and ran over to answer the phone, dropping her keys somewhere along the way.
It’s him!
she thought, and like a giddy schoolgirl prayed that the ringing wouldn’t stop before she got there.

She picked up the phone. ‘‘Hello?’’

‘‘
Baa,
’’ bleated a faint inhuman voice.

Her breath caught in her throat.

It reminded her of the sound a llama might make. ‘‘Juan?’’ she said.

There was a click and a dial tone.

Carrie hung up the phone slowly. Rosalia did not have her home phone number. None of her clients did. She thought of Holly’s blood-splattered apartment, the white feather glued to the back of the hooker’s hanging hand with congealed blood, the head of her son—

—placed upon the top of the bureau in the bedroom. She double-checked the locks on the front door, made sure that the back door was locked and that all of the windows were closed. The euphoria she’d felt had fled, and instead of thinking about her date, she kept hearing that bleating animal sound, thinking of Juan and the Rhino Boy and Holly’s apartment and blood, lots of blood.

After changing into her pajamas, she got into bed and stared at the phone next to the nightstand, willing it to ring, willing Lew to call her.

But he didn’t.

Fifteen

James Marshall arrived home dirty, tired and sore, with only a jackrabbit to show for his efforts. Above the ridge, the sun was setting, and the sky was bluish purple in the east, a brilliant orange in the west. Here in the shadow of the ridge, it was already night, and as he dismounted all he could see of the cabin was a square black smudge against a background of pointed pine tree silhouettes.

He’d been out since dawn, staking a new claim and building a makeshift sluice that he could carry across the hills from one location to another. Around noon, between the claims, his horse had been spooked by a small bobcat and thrown him. He’d spent the better part of the afternoon looking for the damn animal, then the rest of the daylight hours hunting dinner. It had been another in a long line of fruitless days, and Marshall was beginning to wonder if maybe those geology experts down at the bureau office were right. Maybe there wasn’t any gold here. Maybe he should pull up stakes and head to Colorado along with everyone else.

But he remembered the knowledge that had come to him on the trail—

—and the certainty that there was treasure awaiting him here in the West. He could not quit this country. Besides, he’d invested too much time and energy here in California to give up now. And maybe this new claim would pan out. It was situated at the bottom of a rocky hill, and the soil looked right. He’d even found traces of rose quartz in the rubble near the bank of the creek.

He strung up the rabbit on the porch so Pike couldn’t get at it. Feeling too tired to skin the animal, he kicked the door open, walked into the house, lit the lantern and slumped down onto his pallet. The dog ran around outside, barking, chasing imaginary enemies. Tomorrow he had to go back and oversee construction of the mill. Sutter had entrusted him to manage the project as he saw fit, and as the location was some fifty miles northeast of the fort on a section of the American River, he’d been taking the opportunity to do some scouting of his own in the surrounding mountains, using his cabin as a base. But half of the workers were Indians and all of them were drunks, and they needed much more supervision than he’d hoped. Although he’d gone over the plans with the men again and again, even going so far as to assign to individuals simple repetitive tasks that could not easily be ruined but collectively would contribute to completion of the mill, he still spent most of his time at the site correcting the mistakes of others.

He’d told Sutter to hire carpenters, men who could understand the job and do it well, but the captain was too cheap and instead saddled him with this worthless crew of incompetents.

Marshall glanced out the window at the small sliver of sky visible to him from this angle. The first star was out, a pinpoint of white light too weak to provide any illumination. He was hungry but too tired to get up and make supper, too tired even to go to the cupboard and take out the biscuit tin.

He lay back on the pallet and closed his eyes, thinking he would just take a quick nap and eat afterward, once he’d rested.

He was awakened by the sound of mewling.

The cries were strange, eerie, and made him think of babies and kittens, though ones that were oversized and deformed and crawling about in the wilderness at night.

Marshall sat up, the mewling close by and coming to him through the open window, sounding somehow
slimy,
though that did not make any sense. Where was Pike? he wondered. The dog barked at every stray lizard that scuttled within a hundred yards of the cabin. He should have been barking up a storm.

But there was no Pike.

Only the mewling.

Marshall had lived in this section of California for nigh on three years, and he had never been afraid here until now. He’d slept with spiders, awakened next to wolves, bathed with snakes. He had even had a chunk of his left arm ripped out by an angry bear before he’d built the cabin. But he had not experienced the deep paralyzing fear that he felt right at this moment.

Not since the trail.

He was suddenly aware of how far away from the fort he was, how far away from people.

Marshall walked across the cabin, lit a match and turned up the flame on the lamp. ‘‘Pike!’’ he called.

No answer.

He looked out the window at the blackness of night. ‘‘Pike!’’

Only the mewling.

He realized now what bothered him the most about those whiny high-pitched cries. They weren’t cacophonous,overlapping the way such noises usually did. There were deliberate pauses, calls and responses. The creatures making the sounds were communicating with each other. Talking.

He was afraid to leave the cabin and go outside, but he knew he must. Pike was more than just an animal; he was his friend, and Marshall could not just sit indoors and hide when the dog might be in danger. He owed it to Pike to find out what, if anything, was wrong.

Marshall picked up his rifle and lit another lantern, leaving the first one on the table and carrying the other outside with him. The lamp threw a circle of light around him as he walked. Although he could still hear the mewling, it was fainter than it had been, and he wondered if his presence had scared the creatures away.

He checked the ground for footprints as he walked, or spoor, but either the lantern did not provide enough illumination or the creatures had not ventured this close.

Why did he keep thinking of them as
creatures
?

Because he knew they weren’t human and didn’t think they were animal. He kept remembering the wagon train’s journey through the Dark Woods, the squat, dark figure he’d seen darting from bush to bush, the whispers that he couldn’t understand but that seemed to be speaking directly to him.

‘‘Pike!’’ he called. ‘‘Pike!’’

The mewling had stopped now. Or was too far away for him to hear.

‘‘Pike!’’

The dog’s body was lying in the dirt path on the south side of the cabin, a dark shape on the light ground. He saw it first in the periphery of his lantern circle, a vague silhouette, but he knew immediately what it was.

Marshall moved closer. ‘‘Pike?’’ he whispered. The dog did not stir, and when he got near enough to see details, he understood why. The animal’s head had been ripped off, and large talons or claws had rent the body, leaving it a terrible mess of blood and fur. The head itself was nowhere to be seen, and Marshall looked away, both sickened and scared, searching for the glint of predatory eyes in the darkness surrounding him.

He shifted the lantern and rifle in his hands, making the gun easier to shoot should he need to do so.

A fly buzzed by his ear. He looked up involuntarily, his eyes following its ascent . . . and he saw Pike’s head. It had been speared to a branch of the tree a foot or two above him. Dead white dog eyes stared unseeingly into his own, the bloody tongue hanging between parted canine teeth. More flies hovered about, their buzzing suddenly loud in the night stillness.

Marshall backed up, nausea and terror alternating their demands within him.

He returned quickly to the cabin, leaving both lanterns on, and spent the rest of the night in a chair, his back against a wall, holding the loaded shotgun in his lap.

As expected, the workers had not accomplished the tasks he had set out for them, and Marshall spent the next week overseeing the men and ordering them to fix the mistakes they’d made, all the while doing the work of ten men himself, trying like hell to finish the mill on schedule. If before he would have felt anxious spending so much time away from his claims and not searching for gold, he was now thankful to be around other men, grateful for their company. He’d told no one what had happened, and when High Jim asked about Pike, Marshall said absently that he was probably around somewhere.

The days were short, the nights were long, and it was those long nights that gave him the most trouble. He could handle the work,
needed
the work, and the more jobs he had to do during daylight hours, the happier he was. It was his goal to tire himself out so that he could sleep through the night.

It was a goal that remained unmet.

There was music and drinking among the men, loud talk and life. But the coming of darkness served to accentuate how far they were from either fort or town, how small their encampment was against this vast wild land. He woke up several times each night, and often at those odd hours he heard noises in the distance that he could neither explain nor identify: strange whistling in the hills, harsh cries in the canyons, grumbles and growls that blended with the sounds of the river but were not of it.

And the mewling.