Horn groaned and covered his eyes with his arm.
“He’s affrighted,” Bane said, and spat. The grizzled logger clutched his rifle in one hand and a tomahawk in the opposite. His knuckles were white. He kept moving his eyes.
“Afraid of what?” Miller said, surveying the area. He didn’t like the feel of the place, its dankness, the malformed cottonwoods, the garbage. He also disliked the fact Calhoun and Ma weren’t around.
Stevens and Bane glanced at each other and shrugged. Stevens squatted by Horn and patted his arm almost tenderly. “Wanna slug of this fine awerdenty, kid? Where’d those other boys get to, eh?” He helped Horn get seated upright, then held the jug for him while the kid had pull.
Ruark scowled and ambled to the drop and stared down into the valley. The water thumped and so did Miller’s heart. He tilted his head and stared through the opening above the clearing, regarded the brilliant blue-gold sky. Cloudless, immaculate. Already the sun was low against the peaks. Dark came early in the mountains. The sun seemed peculiar—it blurred and flames radiated from its core and its rim blackened like a coal.
Horn coughed and wiped his mouth on his wool sleeve. “Yeh, tripped an’ smacked muh noggin’. Weren’t no stob, though. No sir. They’s a snare yonder. Prolly more where that come from.” He pointed and Bane went and examined the spot.
Bane whistled and said, “He ain’t blowin’ smoke. Step light, boys. We ain’t alone.”
“Bushwhackers,” Ruark said, turning with predatory swiftness to regard his comrade.
“Ain’t no bushwhackers.” Stevens rose and swiped at the gathering flies with his hat. “We maybe got us a trapper tucked into that park down there. That’s what we got.”
“Shit.” Bane lifted a piece of thin rope, its long end snaking off through the underbrush. He coiled in the slack and gave it a yank. A bell clanged nearby and Bane threw the rope and jumped back as if scalded. “Shit!”
“Yeh, shit!” Ruark said and stepped away from the ridgeline. He had his Sharps in hand now.
Miller said, “Thad, where’s Cal and Ma?”
Horn still appeared confused from the blow to his head, but the grave faces of his companions sobered him a bit. “Din’t see on account I was woozy for a spell. Heard ’em jawin’ with somebody that come up on us. Cal said to hang on, they’d be right back.”
“You act a mite nervous. Something else happen?”
The boy hesitated. “Din’t much care for the sound of whoever they was that jawed with Cal an’ Ma. Not ’tall. Sounded right wicked.”
“The hell does that mean?” Stevens said.
Horn shrugged and pulled on his cap.
“Shitfire!” Bane said, and spat.
“How long ago?” Miller said. He thought of hiding in the trenches during the war, scanning the gloom for signs of the enemy creeping forward. He’d learned, as did most men of violence, to recognize the scent of imminent peril. At that moment the scent was very strong indeed.
“I reckon half an’ hour ago. I blacked out for a while. Them shots snapped me outta it.”
Before the boy had finished speaking, Bane and Ruark slipped away to the edge of the clearing, cutting for sign. Ruark whistled and everyone but Horn hustled over. Just beyond a deadfall he’d found a well-beaten footpath. Their missing comrades had passed this way, and so had at least two others. Bane swore and cut a plug of chaw and jammed it in his mouth. He swore again, and spat. The four held a brief discussion and decided there might be trouble ahead so caution was advised. Miller would help Horn back to camp while the rest went on to find Calhoun and Ma. Horn got to his feet and joined them, visibly shaking off his unsteadiness. “Like hell. Ma is my boy. I’m goin’.”
“Fine,” Stevens said. “Moses, you lead the way.” And the men proceeded along the path single file. The going was much easier than before as the path lay a few feet from the ridgeline and the hills, while steep, were much gentler than before.
Ten minutes later they came to a fork at the base of a dead red cedar. The bole of the cedar would’ve required four or five men to link hands to span its girth. It had sheared off at about the eighty foot mark. One fork of the trail continued along the ridge; the other descended into the valley, which was still mostly hidden by forest. Boot-prints went both directions, but Bane and Ruark were confident there friends had travelled in the valley. Bane sniffed the air, then gestured downward. “Wood smoke.”
“Sure enough,” Miller said just then winding the tang of smoke. They’d proceeded only a few paces when he happened to look back and stopped with a hiss of warning to his companions.
“What is it?” Stevens said.
“That tree,” Miller said, indicating a blaze mark on the downhill face of the big dead cedar—a stylized ring, broken on the sinister side. The symbol was roughly four feet across and gouged in a good three inches. Someone had daubed it in a thick reddish paint, now bled and mostly absorbed by the wood. It appeared petrified with age. Some inherent quality of the ring caused Miller’s flesh to crawl. The light seemed to dim, the forest to close in.
Nobody said anything. Stevens produced a small spy glass and swept the area. He muttered and tossed the glass to Bane. Bane looked around. He passed it to Ruark. Finally he swore and handed the glass back. Stevens in turn let Miller have a go. Stevens said, “I make out three more—there, there, and there.” He was correct. Miller spotted the other trees scattered along the hillside. Each was huge and dead, and each bore the weird glyph.
“I seen that mark afore,” Bane said in a reverential whisper.
“That book,” Miller said and Bane grunted. Miller asked for Stevens’ jug, hooked the handle with his pinky, mountain man fashion, and took a long, stout pull of the whiskey until black stars shot across his vision. Then he gasped for air and helped himself to another, healthier swig.
“Jaysus,” Stevens said when he finally retrieved his hooch. He shook the jug with a sad, amazed expression as if not quite comprehending how this could’ve happened to his stock.
“I don’t cotton to this ’tall,” Horn said. He rubbed the goose egg on his forehead. He was flour-pale.
“I’m with the pup,” Bane said. He spat. Ruark grunted agreement. He too spat a gob of Virginia Pride into the shrubbery.
Stevens crept up to the cedar and studied it intently, ran his fingers over the rough bark. He said, “Damn it all! Boys, lookee here.” As everyone clustered around he showed them how a great chunk of bark was separate from the tree. The slab of bark was as tall as three men, narrowing to a sharp peak. The outline, as of a door, was clear once they discerned it against the pattern. The bark door was hinged with sinew on one side.
“Whata ya reckon it is?” Horn said, backing away.
Watching Stevens trace the panel in search of a catch caused Miller’s anxiety to sharpen. The light was fading and far too early in the afternoon. The sun’s edge was being rapidly eaten by a black wave, creating a broken ring of fire and shadow. This phenomenon juxtaposed with the broken ring carved in the tree. Miller said, “Don’t boys! Just leave it!”
Stevens muttered his satisfaction at locating the catch. Bane and Stevens pulled the wooden panel three quarters of the way open and then stopped, bodies rigid as stone. From his vantage Miller couldn’t make out much of the hollow, gloomy interior, but the other two men stood with their necks craned and Bane moaned, low and aggrieved as a fellow who’d been stabbed in the gut. “Sweet Lord in heaven!” Stevens said.
Miller took several broad steps to join them at the portal. He gazed within and saw—
—Something squirmed and uncoiled, a darker piece of darkness, and resolved into—