Now the Artifact in Lovecraft’s pocket began a slow, rhythmic pulsing, as if in response to the proximity of their destination. He looked down at his watch pocket and started momentarily, taken aback by the light, so intense it was visible even in the bright daylight. By all reason, the thing should have burned through his clothes right into his flesh, but the light was cool. What he felt instead of heat was a soreness deep within his body, and that pain pulsated in time to the light. “Bob,” he whispered.
Howard grunted.
“Bob, I believe we are close by.”
“I don’t see a damned thing, HP. And I don’t think we’re gonna be seein’ much at all if the weather turns the way it looks.”
Indeed, now that they had come over the ridge, they could see the storm front rolling toward them-directly toward them, moving slowly in its boiling motion as if it were searching them out. If they had not been so anxious, they might have stopped to watch the spectacle and its awe-inspiring beauty.
“I feel funny,” said Glory.
“So do I,” Howard replied, glancing at Lovecraft.
Glory shifted her position to take some pressure off the ropes. “My hair’s standing on end, like it does before a thunderstorm.”
“We should. then be wary of lightning,” said Lovecraft. “I believe we are safe in the confines of the car, since it has rubber tires, and its metal body will act much like a Faraday cage.” He felt a little more at ease now that he was able to expound upon something, but the fear in his core was growing, just as it was in the others. “Bob, I believe the Artifact is behaving like a homing device and perhaps simultaneously a beacon. It will surely lead us to our destination, but it also seems to be drawing the storm into our proximity. I suggest we continue downhill. ”
“Ain’t no other way to go now,” Howard said sarcastically. Then he sobered. “I think we’re headed for that box canyon down there. Road don’t have no business goin’ anywhere else.”
Soon the interior of the car was bitter with the odor of burning brake pads, and they rolled the windows all the way down. Even with the repaired suspension, it was a rough ride. Howard drove as quickly as he could to evade their pursuers even though he realized there was only this single road out here in the Godforsaken badlands. If they didn’t catch them going in, they would certainly be waiting for them on the way out. He decided that there would only be one more confrontation between them, and at the risk of driving off the edge, he bent awkwardly down to check his two pistols under his seat.
A mile or so after they reached the base of the mountain, they passed the mouth of the box canyon. Lovecraft called out to turn around when the Artifact suddenly grew dim. Howard backed up and drove off the road onto the windswept surface of scorched reddish earth. The storm-borne wind blasted them with a fine red dust, and they put the windows up again, glad that the weather had dampened the heat.
In a little while, they could no longer see anything behind them. If they were being pursued, now it was the blind chasing the blind. Howard worried that the Chevy would choke in the dust; he tried to drive more reasonably, but then he had no choice but to slow down because of the poor visibility. On the right side of the car, the red dust had begun to cake the windows; drifts of it were forming on the lefthand edge of the windshield.
Without warning, they were all thrown forward and to the right. There was a terrible crunch, and then a muffled thud. Howard braked hard and skidded to a stop, his stomach suddenly hollow with the feeling of doom. If that was the front axle, then they were as good as dead.
Howard parked the car and momentarily rested his sweaty brow against the steering wheel, his eyes closed. He was too tired to curse and too afraid to get out. They were all silent, listening to the roar of the wind and the intermittent misfiring of the Chevy’s laboring engine.
“Bob?” said Lovecraft.
“Sometimes, HP, I wish to God I had never written back to you. I should be home takin’ care of my Ma and now I’m out in the middle of the God damned desert about to be meat for some coyote. What the hell came over me that night, huh?”
“We have no choice now, Bob. And wasn’t it you who wrote first to me?”
Howard looked up and laughed. “We’re about to die, and you’re sittin’ there nitpickin’?”
“The truth is the truth in any circumstance.”
There was a thump from the back. Both men turned to look. “Look outside,” said Glory.
Lovecraft’s face fell. “I think we’re here,” he said.
The wind had abated for a moment. Through the windshield they could see an ancient formation of adobe brick. It was impossible to tell how large it was, or how far away, but from photos he had seen of the old pueblos, Lovecraft guessed that they were within a few hundred yards of a massive structure only partially visible to them.
It was a city, or a giant dwelling built halfway into the stone of the cliff that formed the western valley wall. From under the broad stone lip that hung over the stone dwellings, other structures of adobe walls, embankments, buildings-spread out in half circle formations until they eroded into the barren red clay of the valley floor. A few of the low circular buildings beyond the shadow of the overhang were still standing, the largest of them still imposing though its contours had softened over the centuries.
“Unless y’all want to choke to death out here, we oughta hightail it to one of them houses,” said Howard. “Grab whatever you can carry, and let’s sit out the storm.”
They had to tie wet handkerchiefs around their faces to keep the swirling vermilion dust out of their lungs. Glory also wore a makeshift scarf, which she tied like a pirate’s headwrap to keep her hair under control. They gathered up what they could and marked out the direction to the pueblo. The light was waning rapidly under the storm clouds-there wouldn’t be much time before it grew too dark to see.
“I’m tempted to say something,” said Glory. “That if I could go back to Thalia on the day I met the two of you, I’d accept the ride just the same.” She tucked a folded piece of paper into her purse. “But that’d just be me being nice.”
Howard grunted something unintelligible.
“There is no turning back now,” Lovecraft said. Though he knew he was stating the obvious, the declaration seemed almost a ritual necessity.
Glory smiled, almost wistfully. “Well, here I am, fellas.”
“I’m leadin’,” said Howard. “We don’t want to get separated, so you hold on to my belt here, Glory. And HP, you tie yourself to Glory, too. You take up the rear till we get to the ruins, then ya can lead with the Artifact.” He pulled his belt off, then looped it back through the back loop on his pants. He handed the end to Glory.
Lovecraft also took off his belt and pulled it through the back loop of Glory’s pants. “I feel like I’m on some mountain-climbing expedition, all roped together,” she mumbled.
“Let’s go.”
It couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred yards to the first ruins, but in the dust that blotted out everything more than a hand’s width in front of them, the walk seemed interminable. Lovecraft found himself drifting in and out of a nostalgic reverie, though he knew it was inappropriate. The obscuring dust made the world small and intimate, and though the wind was cold, he was still warm enough in his clothes to feel a sense of misplaced comfort. There was an ordeal to endure ahead-he knew that with certainty-and perhaps he had already begun to withdraw as he was wont to do. under stress. He remembered languorous summer days when he never bothered to change out of his pajamas, when he lay in bed into the middle of the afternoon and let his aunts bring him warm milk for the stomach ailment they thought he had. Pleasant days of reading and drowsing between passages, lapsing over the threshold of sleep so that what he had read became immediately real in the world of dreams. Perhaps that was why he was so preoccupied with sleep, and dreaming, with Hypnos and Oneiros, with mythic histories and men gone over into the kingdom of madness. As he squinted his watering eyes and coughed under his wraps, he wondered what would happen if he simply stopped and let the world fade into a dark and comfortable cloud would he awaken in bed somewhere in some other time, this day but a dream of the future or of the past?