The Devoured Read online

  "I can think of no better gift for a dying man than the chance to save his child. I will take you to your grandfather."

  Minutes later, the Paiute man, who introduced himself as Taba, walked with Emmett, guiding him to the home of Poohwi. As they traveled deeper into the reservation, Emmett became acutely aware that the looks that the Paiute were shooting him were worse than what he had experienced in his own town. At least the white men were cultured enough to try to conceal their disdain. The Paiute took no such measures. This half-breed dressed in the clothes of the invaders was not welcome or trusted. Looking around, he could hardly blame them for their anger and distrust. Cultured society had really left them with the short end of the stick. Still, an understanding of their dislike was not enough to make Emmett feel at ease. He kept riding through, careful not to make eye contact with anyone.

  It was nearly dusk as Emmett and Taba approached the straw hovel where Poohwi laid his head at night. Celestial pigments—orange, pink, and purple—mingled across the horizon. The tiny homes of the native people stood like solid shadows against the brilliant sunset.

  A smoky smell of some unfamiliar spice wafted out from the shelter. While the scent was not inherently unpleasant, the alien fragrance did little to settle Emmett's already nervous belly. He knew little of his mother's family, but was aware that she had not spoken to her father in many, many years. Exactly what had caused the schism between father and daughter was unclear. But Emmett was certain there would still be some bad blood.

  "This is as far as I go. Settle your business and be on your way, please." Taba's tone was unfriendly, but not aggressive. He seemed to wish Emmett no ill will. It was clear, however, that he didn't want the young man on Paiute land any longer than absolutely necessary.

  While Emmett's mother had shared many beliefs and customs of her people with him, she had never discussed common day-to-day practices, like the customary way to announce oneself for a visit. Should he just knock, or announce himself? Should he just walk in?

  Finally Emmett walked up to the doorless entryway and cast his voice into the modest shelter.

  "Poohwi? May I come in?"

  No answer.

  Emmett spoke up again. "My name is Emmett. I'm Kylie Wongraven’s son. Or Kylie Brunelle, I guess. She took her Ma’s name, right?

  The only response from within was a fit of dry coughing. Once the coughing subsided, Emmett spoke again.

  "I think you called her Uweka."

  Another cough, more brief this time, sounded forth from the dark confines of the straw home. Then finally a response.

  "Uweka?" the voice of his grandfather weakly asked in response.

  Emmett crouched and edged into the hut, fighting back some illogical fear that chilled him. Something about the tone of Poohwi's sickly voice did not sit right with him. Despite the weakness in the wheezing, breathy intonation of that single word, Emmett could hear something subtly strong and dark within Poohwi's voice.

  More than just the whispery malignance of his grandfather's voice struck a bad chord with Emmett. The shadowy confines of the tiny building contained a darkness so deep and voluminous that it seemed to repel the waning light of the sunset and defy the limitations of the space within the hut. Of course, these were crazy ideas, and Emmett pushed them as far into the back of his mind as he could manage.

  After a few seconds his eyes adjusted to the darkness of his grandfather's home. He couldn't make out any details, but he could distinguish the vague shape of an old man lying atop a bed of hay. His features were shrouded, but deeply ingrained wrinkles criss-crossed the skin on Poohwi's face, and his dark eyes were sunken deep into their sockets.

  Other objects stood out, looking sinister in the darkness. A stone knife, which was probably no more than a household tool, invoked visions of ritual murder under fading light. A long pipe, carved from the bone of some animal and decorated with feathers, still held the burning, orange embers of some arcane herb in its bowl. Hanging above Poohwi's bed was what Emmett could only think of as a mobile of various animal bones, for that he could glean no practical purpose, but conjured a dozen nightmare functions in his mind.

  Emmett swallowed down his fear, thinking it best not to waste the sick geriatric's time.

  "I know you're sick, and I don't wanna make you any more uncomfortable than you are, but I need your help." Emmett sucked in a deep breath, trying to work up the will to say the words he knew and could not speak. "My mother's dying."

  "Uweka?" Again Poohwi replied with a question. Emmett wondered if the old shaman was in his right mind.

  "Medicine's failed her. The doctors we've seen can't make her better. I prayed to Christ, but if he's there he ain't listening."

  A terrible and pained laugh crept out through the shaman's withered lips.

  "So you seek answers from the world she left behind? From the tribe she left to rot?" Poohwi's words were pure venom.

  "I don't know what happened with you and her and her mother. All I know is that I can't let my ma die and I hope you can't let your daughter die."

  Poohwi grunted, then broke into another coughing fit. Emmett waited for a response after the coughing had stopped, but was met with only silence.

  "I can hear death in your voice. The reaper is coming for you too. You have the chance to do something good before you go, though. I know you can save her. If you can't, then I have shit for options."

  Another moment of silence passed. Emmett tried to push back the flood of emotion he was feeling and stem the tide of oncoming tears. Finally Poohwi made a sound as if coming to the conclusion of a series of mental calculations.

  "You are right, boy," Poohwi hissed in a breathless voice. "I can make a difference before I go. And I should."

  Poohwi pointed toward a basket near his feet. It was woven straw with painted designs that most likely were bright and colorful in the daylight, but took on a monochromatic tone in the darkness.

  "Bring me a hide from that basket. Also, my knife."

  Emmett did not question his mother's sire. He brought the knife and hide over to Poohwi without a word.

  The shaman sat up as best he could. He laid the hide across his lap and called Emmett closer.

  "For all things there are prices," Poohwi whispered. "For this, the price is blood."

  He then reached out and clasped onto Emmett's enormous hand. There was a feebleness to the old shaman’s grip.

  "Are you willing to bleed for your mother?"

  Emmett was scared. The entirety of the situation was becoming too much for him—the darkness, the sickly old shaman, the primitive stone knife. Nonetheless, he mumbled in the affirmative and allowed Poohwi to slice open his palm.

  Pain shot through Emmett's body as the razor-sharp flint of Poohwi's blade cut across his palm. Blood pooled up from the wound, looking like ink in the shadows of the hovel.

  "You may actually have the nerve for what comes next, you bear of a boy."

  Without saying another word, Poohwi began to draw, in Emmett's blood, a crude map across the piece of hide. The map would lead Emmett to an ancient place, one of the first bits of creation to come out of the nothingness before. A place too secret and mystical for the white men to discover on their own.

  "There is a magic that can help you. A magic that can save her. But like this map I give you to find it, the magic itself will have a price."

  The sickly old Paiute dipped his finger into the blood pooled in Emmett's palm again, letting the crimson life force coat his wrinkled finger.

  "What are you willing to pay for your mother's life?"

  Emmett wasn't sure if his grandfather was offering a stern warning, testing his devotion, or having a go at scaring the half-breed. Poohwi's motivations did not matter to him. His answer was the same, regardless.

  "Anything."

  ***

  There is a tendency in children and teenagers to confuse the hierarchy of troubles that they face. Three days had passed since Emmett had left the Paiute reserv
ation. He was short on food and water. The nights were getting colder the deeper east he went. And now he stood at the narrow entrance to a hidden cave at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. He had come to retrieve some ancient knowledge that a bitter, crazed shaman had warned would carry a steep price. The most pressing trouble in his mind, however, was how he would pay Mary Coughlin for the extra days she was taking care of his mother.

  The bright light of day seemed to barely penetrate the first few feet within the unassuming cave's entrance. Despite the darkness within, Emmett could make out the carving on the stone floor, just as his grandfather had described it. A sigil that looked vaguely like a crooked, broken cross was cut smoothly into the rough stone floor. There seemed to be a glow to it, like sunlit stained-glass set within bedrock. Although the crooked cross was hidden adequately within the shadows, once Emmett's attention fell upon it, the symbol seemed to shine like the sun, or a burst of captured lightning.

  Perhaps if he had been a fully grown man, in mind and body, then his sense of trouble would have been more refined. As an adult, there would have been a good chance that Emmett would never have stepped into the Cavern of the First Breath. Being a desperate, teenage boy, Emmett suffered from an overabundance of bravery and under-abundance of sense.

  Oswald, the mule that had served as transport for his journey, whinnied and pulled at his tether. The animal sensed something there that it did not like. Emmett feared that Oswald might have caught scent of a bear or a mountain cat. If such a thing was lurking within the cave he would be in a tough spot. Poohwi had assured him that no animal would care to call this subterranean place home. If the shaman's words were true, then whatever bad feeling the mule was getting must have some esoteric reason.

  Having been raised by a practical man for most of his life, Emmett found less fear in the idea of some ancient slumbering evil than he did a young, slumbering predator.

  The young man lit a torch, little more than stick of hickory lathered in tar, and pressed into the darkness of the cave. The mouth of the cave was short and narrow. Emmett had to stoop and tuck his arms in front of him in order to fit. Despite the discomfort of the tight quarters, Emmett took special care not to step upon the engraving of the crooked cross. To do so felt wrong and fundamentally dangerous.

  The darkness of the cave seemed to be drawn to Emmett, reacting to some manner of gravity within his soul. The torch kept the hungry shadows at bay, but only by the smallest margin. In such tight quarters, that small margin was enough. Emmett could make out the stone earth directly ahead of him, which was the most important detail to see. If some beast had made this place home, though, Emmett wouldn't see it break into the light until it was far too late. There would be just enough time to catch a glimpse of his killer before being mauled.

  The calcified stone walls that scraped against his shoulder were also illuminated and, to Emmett’s dismay, they seemed to be narrowing even further. Emmett feared that someone of his size may just get jammed between the walls and stuck in the cave forever. For his mother's sake, he pushed on.

  After what had felt like an hour to his stooped back and cramping muscles, the narrowing corridor opened up into a massive grotto with stone ceilings high enough to rival the cathedral he'd seen as a boy one time in Los Angeles. The corridor that he passed through stood ten feet above the dark lake. Emmett had nearly fallen out from the narrow walkway and into the grotto, but managed to catch himself at the last moment.

  A moss of some sort, alive with a soft glow of its own, bathed the underground lake in a soft, emerald glow. Pale, yellow stalactites hung down, like the overbite of some awful titan. In the middle of the cavern, amidst the pool of black, shimmering water, four steps rose from below the surface and ended before a wide, stone block painted with dark, runny stains. Draped over the block, Emmett could see dozens of hides, all decorated with exotic writing.

  Emmett could not imagine trying to get undressed in the claustrophobic confines of the tunnel. Instead he threw his fear of the oncoming night's cold to the wind and leapt into the lake fully clothed. The torch he left behind, to burn within the stone corridor and mark the way he had entered.

  His substantial mass made a large splash as his body tore through the surface tension of the water. He did not know how far down the lakebed might be, but his body had found no sign of it thus far, and he was not interested in discovering that secret. The deep, incredible cold of the lake sent the young man's muscles into shock, freezing them in place. Below the surface of the water all light seemed to disappear and Emmett could feel the slimy tendrils of some unseen creature grabbing at him. He began to panic, and sucked in a mouthful of water before successfully swimming up and breaching the surface.

  With his head above the surface, Emmett coughed up the salty water of the black grotto. Only after he had finished coughing and choking did he realize that the lake seemed to be made up of salt water. He wondered how the far off Pacific was contributing to such a place, but the question vanished just as quickly as it had come about. There were more pressing mysteries at hand.

  Emmett rolled his shoulders and his neck, his chin grazing the rippling surface of the frigid water. His muscles were screaming in protest against the cold, but the boy commanded them to fall in line. A moment later he began swimming toward the steps that rose up like the ruins of a flooded city.

  Soaked and dripping, Emmett clambered up the steps once his limbs found purchase upon them. Climbing up was hard, as the steps were covered in calcium and algae. He slipped more than once and managed to cut his hand open, from the base of his palm the base of his pinky finger, on a barnacle that clung to the partially submerged staircase. After a few tries and much cursing, Emmett finally made it up the steps.

  The stone slab was only feet away from him. Up close, the runny stains on the stone that he had spotted from afar reminded him of the rust colored rivulets that ran down the side of the butcher's block in his kitchen. Images from the penny-dreadfuls that his friend, Oliver, had sometimes let him borrow came to the forefront of his mind—stories of sinister blood sacrifices and pagan cults.

  That wasn't quite right. Emmett knew in his bones that this was not a chamber of sacrifice. No, his first comparison to the butcher's block was more on point. This grotto was a place of feeding. Not for a mountain cat or bear either. No, it was the thing that first breathed the world into being who supped in this watery cavern. Emmett was sure of it.

  His attention turned toward the numerous hides draped across the grotto’s altar. He couldn't rightly tell what manner of animal they had come from, but each was finely tanned and covered in arcane symbols and geometric diagrams. The language was alien to him, but there seemed to be a terrible power to it—some ancient force captured within the lines and shapes.

  Fear began to overtake the young man, forcing adrenaline into his veins and causing his usually calm hands to shake. He needed to get out. Now. The only way he could see in or out of the cave was marked by the light of his torch, and that path was a man and a half above the water line.

  The terrible realization that he had literally jumped into a possibly inescapable situation increased Emmett's panic. His head whipped back and forth, scanning for any means of egress. There was none. The eerie glow of the moss and the teasing light from his torch visually impressed upon him the hopelessness of his situation.

  He was alone. Alone with the gentle, mocking lapping of the sea against the ancient stone walls, and the crackling laughter of his torch high above. Alone with whatever primordial creatures may lurk in the water surrounding him. Alone with whatever hungry ghosts may haunt the stone walls and stale, salty air.

  But there was something else. There was the altar. And there were the hides, with their ancient secrets. If the hides could unlock the power that his grandfather had spoken of, if they could save his mother's life from sickness, then perhaps they could save him now.

  Emmett turned back to the altar and picked up one of the hides. His selection was not ran
dom. Somehow the young man knew that the spells drawn upon this piece of tanned flesh, the same chestnut color as Poohwi's skin, would hold the key to his survival.

  Once his left hand touched the hide, the blood that dripped from his sliced palm was pulled into the leathery substrate. This ancient text, which must have been sealed with oil or wax (for it showed no sign of water damage), soaked in the crimson life force as hungrily as a dry, cotton rag. It did more than just absorb it. It sucked and slurped at it, demanding and crying and screaming for more.

  The world began to sway in front of Emmett's eyes and he could feel his knees giving way. His body was weakening, as if it had been besieged by a hundred leeches. The sigils and seals and shapes on the hide began to take on a soft, pink glow. That soft glow became more intense and shifted to a deeper red. Emmett was reminded of how the veins of a bat's wings might take on an illuminated look if sunlight were to filter through the leathery gliders.

  Before he had time to dwell on the thought for very long, he saw that he was looking at the ceiling, and its perspective was shifting rapidly. It was as if the room was spinning around him. Soon he feared the water would slap him in the back and drag his body deep within its cold embrace.

  Then the words came to him. The sheet of flesh with the glowing figures was no longer in his field of vision, but he now knew what those figures said. He knew, as if some other voice were speaking them in his mind. And at least a little bit, he understood the power behind those words.

  As gravity continued to shift around him and the sea pushed past his back, Emmett opened his mouth and began to speak the words that would save his life and damn his soul. The words that would give him everything he wanted and take away everything he had. The alien incantation, nearly unpronounceable, came out loud, clear, and powerful, even as the cold water of the Pacific filled his mouth and lungs.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ice cracked beneath the wheels of the cannon as its position was adjusted. The old man couldn't hear the shrill breaking sound over the roar of battle, but felt it through the soles of his boots. The hefty bronze weapon did not roll easily on the frozen ground. He found it miraculous that it moved at all, even with his massive strength behind it. It was as if the ice itself had grabbed ahold of the wheels and fought against his attempts to move it. This concept seemed familiar to him in a faraway manner, but now was not the time to ponder feelings of déjà vu.