Cal rubbed a hand over his face. To my utter disbelief, he was hiding a smile.
I glared at Goldman (the dipshit). “Look, can he protect any flare with this music of his?”
“I think so. It’s a damping field of some sort-a jamming frequency. It creates a sonic veil that the Source, for some reason, can’t penetrate.”
“But when we came upon you,” Doc observed, “he had stopped playing to speak with you.”
“I had the presence of mind to ask him about that, actually,” Goldman said, suddenly cheery. “It’s sort of like my little balls-o’-fire thing, but a lot more powerful. A little touch of thought goes a long way. The real music’s in his head.” He tapped his skull. “And that just keeps going. There’s something about this place, too. Enid said this place is lousy with power.” He shook his head, looking up wistfully into the branches of our sheltering trees. “I can only feel its ghost.”
We raised our eyes in unison to gaze around at the eerie, fog-draped shapes.
“What is this place?” I asked, and tried not to shiver.
In answer, Doc pulled something out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. It was a brochure, damp but still colorful. It showed the front of a modern red brick building with a well-manicured lawn and box hedge. Below that was a big photograph of one of the unnaturally neat hills.
“ ‘Grave Creek Mound State Park,’ ” I read, “ ‘and Delf Norona Museum. Open year-round since 1978.’ ”
“Let me see.” Cal snatched the brochure out of my hand, unfolded it on his lap, and read: “ ‘Grave Creek Mound is probably the most famous of the Adena burial mounds and certainly one of the most impressive.’ ” He stopped reading and looked up at us. “It says they hauled the dirt in baskets. Some of these mounds are over sixty feet high.”
“And two thousand years old,” added Doc. “It is comforting to meet with something of such longevity.”
Comforting. Two-thousand-year-old burial mounds. I will not twitch, I promised myself.
“Where did you get this?” Cal asked Doc.
He shrugged. “While I awaited you, the mist cleared a bit. I saw a building just up the road-that building”-he gestured at the brochure-“and thought to investigate. It is not quite so tidy now.”
“Did it look like anyone else had been in there recently?” Cal asked.
Doc shook his head. “Hard to say. Surely, there had been people there at one time or another. But as to recently, I couldn’t say. Why do you ask?”
“I was wondering if this place might be part of the Bluesman’s underground railroad. Maybe some of his lost sheep are hiding around here-”
Goldie was shaking his head. “He’d already delivered them.”
“Delivered?” I repeated. Jeez, like they were pizzas or takeout or something.
Goldie just blinked his big brown eyes at me.
Cal folded the brochure back up and absently tucked it into his pocket. “That means the Preserve is nearby. Hidden, maybe, but nearby. Possibly even inside that mound. We should be able to find it by daylight.” He stood. “You all get some sleep. I’ll stand watch.”
“Why you?” I asked. “You’ve already stood watch.” “Colleen is right,” agreed Doc. “If anyone should stand watch, Calvin, it is me.”
They argued about it while I slid into my bedroll. I’d stood watch, too, and what I needed now was sleep, not a pitched battle.
Doc won. Cal was asleep in a matter of seconds. Goldie palmed one of his little “balls-o’-fire” and wandered over into the mouth of the cave. As if it could make the dead end any less dead. I slept.
When I woke, there was almost-sunlight creeping about the glen through the mist. The mounds were a lot clearer now, but they hadn’t lost any of their weirdness. Hard to believe they were like this before the Change, too.
After a freezing sponge bath in a nearby stream, I came back to camp to find Cal up and about. Doc was heating water and cobbling together a breakfast. Goldie was nowhere in sight.
Exchanging glances, Cal and I wandered over to the foot of the mound. It rose, green and velvety and sculpted, a good forty or fifty feet above ground level. Mist curled out of the little cave like steamy breath. My imagination woke up, and I was staring at a big green animal with a gaping mouth. A shiver rippled up my back.
Goldie was in the cave, sitting cross-legged on the floor like a Buddha, staring at the blank wall as if it was going to do something fascinating.
“Hey, Goldie,” Cal said. “Doc’s throwing some breakfast together.”
Goldman didn’t answer. He just got up, raised a hand as if to wave us away, then stepped into the rocks and earth as if they were billows of fog. He disappeared.
“Damn,” I said, and meant it.
SEVEN
GOLDIE
Normally, I wouldn’t even think of stepping through a wall of rocky earth, but as milky sunlight oozes into the cave I come to the obvious, if insane, conclusion that that is the only place Enid Blindman and Magritte could have gone. I can still feel the pull of his music. It comes from a place so right under my nose I could put my hand out and touch it.
At dawn, at that moment when the local patch of reality gets its first dusting of enlightenment, I have a moment of mind-altering clarity. The rock and earth seem no more substantial than last night’s mists, and I just step through.
I hear someone shout my name, then there’s silence and darkness. I take another step and the silence is replaced with the slow drip of water and the whisper of air and something else that I don’t hear so much as feel. My eyes adjust to the new reality-a pocket of misty light. Firelight, I think, because of the way it waxes and wanes.
I stumble and fall forward a few steps. Dirt and sand crunch comfortingly under my feet. I put a hand out to steady myself and touch water-slick rock. I’m still in the cave. I smell cave, hear cave, feel cave, and, as my eyes focus, I see cave.
Impressive. Someone’s mimicked rock and earth so well that it took me half the night to see through it. I wonder how far into the mound this goes.
Any second, I suspect, Cal and company will realize what’s happened and come blundering through after me. Question is, do I wait around for them, thus triggering another round of recriminations and explanations and apologies, or do I plow right on in?
I plow, heading for the source of the dancing light. The narrow passage widens out and jogs right. It meets a broader corridor with a ceiling so high it seems to connect with outer space. There are torches here, stuck in crude sconces along the rough walls. To the left, the corridor descends farther into the earth; to the right, it rises. The sound of rushing water comes from the lower branch; above, I hear something that’s almost music.
I swing upward to the right, passing so close to a torch that it should’ve singed my hair. It doesn’t, because it’s putting out no heat. It’s also completely silent. Someone here has gotten the faux-glow thing down to a fine art. I touch a finger to the flame.
“You’re one stubborn son’vabitch, aren’t you?”
I wheel to find the flare, Magritte, floating about five feet up the passage from me in a wash of pale violet light. She throws me off balance, like misjudging a step.
“So I’m told,” I answer. “The Preserve, I presume?”
She tilts her head, looking me up and down with those amazing golden eyes and making me acutely aware of my sartorial shortcomings. Reflexively, I try to shove hair out of my face.
“The doorway to it. A doorway,” she amends. Her voice is soft and carries the lilt of the bayou. “You shouldn’t’ve come here. Mary don’t want people to come here without they been invited.”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to gate-crash, but it’s very important for me to understand how Enid protects you from the Source.”
“I know.” She seems sincerely empathetic. “But I don’t think you can understand it. It’s just something he does. What you do gotta understand is that Mary’s built this whole world here, and she’ll protect it.” She floats closer. So close I can see the subtle wrinkle of concern between her pale brows. “You should go.”