He'd had a dream the other night that he'd been on the road to Randall and his horse had kicked something in the trail that turned out to be Isabella's head. The hair was filthy and filled with spiderwebs, the skin rotting, the eyes gone, but the bloody mouth worked perfectly and the head flew up into the air before him and began to shriek.
Though he knew it was probably just his father's doing, he still couldn't help feeling some trepidation at the thought of passing by the dreaded place after a dream such as that.
Leland walked into the house, yelled to Hattie in the kitchen that he was going over to see Samuel and visit for a while, have a smoke.
"Supper's gonna be on soon!" she called.
"I'll be back in twenty minutes!" He looked at his pocket watch and headed out the door. She said something behind him, but he didn't hear what it was and it didn't really matter. Even if he was late, she'd hold supper for him.
Magic was still good for a few things around here. Samuel Hawks was sitting on his porch, smoking his pipe, looking after the slowly setting sun, which would be below both the clouds and the rim of the canyon in a few more minutes. He nodded to Leland, motioned for him to come up and sit a spell.
A spell
Samuel's wife Maureen was watching the Engstrom's baby John while their next-door neighbors went to the market and a loud constant crying could be heard from inside the house. Samuel reached back behind him and shut the window as Leland took a seat on the swing next to his friend's rocker. "Thought you was leavin'" 'romorrow."
"Be back when? A week?"
"About that." Leland took out his pipe, packed down some tobacco, lit it. "Watch Hattie and Robert for me?"
Samuel chuckled. "Hattie don't need no one watching out for her. That li'l woman can take care of herself." He glanced over. "Which way you headin' out?"
"To Randall? There's only one way."
Samuel said nothing, looked north toward the buttes.
Leland cleared his throat, turned toward his friend. "You saw something out there once, didn't you? Over by Isabella's cave?"
Samuel nodded slowly, was silent for a moment. He took a puff on his pipe. "Wudn't nuthin' specific, you know.
Wudn't no specter or Spock. I don't know what I told you before, but it was more something' I felt than saw.r=
"I thought you said you saw something"
"I did, I did. But that wudn't the scariest part is I guess what I'm lryin' to say. It's what I felt not what I saw that scared the bejeebers out a me."
"So what'd you see? Tell me again."
Samuel smoked in silence for a bit, and Leland thought
his friend wasn't going to respond at all, but finally he sighed. "I was gonna go fishing upriver, past that sycamore grove. It was spring, I think, and it wudn't even night, although I think it was a little cloudy." He paused, puffed. "I got spooked around that swampy area.
Mighta all been in my head, but I thought I heard noises, and I stopped for a moment and..."
He shook his head.
"What?"
"I felt her lookin' at me. It don't make no sense, but it was like for a minute she was lookin' through me, too. Everything looked brighter.
Or darker. Something. Anyway, it felt like I was seem' through someone else's eyes, but I knew it was her lookin' through my eyes.
Then I felt like she was lookin' at me again, and everywhere I turned I felt eyes peerin' at me, hidden in that swampy water, behind the grasses, up on the cliffs. It scared the hell out a me, I tell you.
Then I saw it, over by the bottom of the canyon wall, next to a pile of old rabble that had to be coverin' her cave."
"What?"
"A shadow. But it weren't like any shadow I ever seen. It was kinda human-shaped, female if you want to know the truth, but it din't move right. It sorta twisted in on itself instead a walked. Creepiest damn thing I ever saw. It twisted toward me, and I just hightailed it out a there. Never did go fishing. And I never been back up that part of the canyon since." He looked meaningfully at Leland. "If I were you, I wouldn't go there, neither."
"I have no choice. My materials are in Randall, and until they build a train track to Wolf Canyon, I have to pick them up myself."
There was another long silence as they both smoked, looking up at the darkening late afternoon sky.
'There is another way to Randall," Samuel said. "Go south out a the canyon, take the new road from Rio Verde.
It'll add an extra day to your trip, but believe me, it's worth it."
Leland did not respond.
"It's worth it."
Leland walked home feeling even more uneasy than he had on his way over, although perhaps that was what he wanted, the reason he'd gone to see Samuel in the first place.
Supper was ready when he arrived, and he hid his con ceres for Robert's sake, eating in silence, letting Hattie talk to the boy and answer his nearly continuous questions. The person he should discuss this with was his father, but he already knew what Grover would say, and despite the comfort he himself would receive from such a discussion, he thought it better not to worry the old man. He'd talk to his dad about it once he returned from Randall. If he returned from Randall. Now he was just being stupid.
He left early the next morning but not as early as he'd originally planned. The days were getting shorter already, in anticipation of fall, and when Hattie got up to make breakfast, the sky outside was still dark. It was almost an hour's ride to the section of canyon near Isabella's cave, but he didn't want to take any chances and be caught there before the sun arose, so he dawdled, playing for time until there was a definite lightening in the sky above the eastern walls.
There was no problem on the way out. In spite of all his worries, he inexplicably found himself occupied with the mundane thoughts of haberdashery while passing through the dreaded section of canyon, and by the time it registered that Isabella was entombed somewhere on the far side of this marsh, he was already past the line of her cave.
He spurred his horse on, quickly galloped until that area of the canyon was hidden behind a curve of the landscape.
The rest of the trip Qver was uneventful, his day and night in Randall were f'me, and he easily found everything he needed.
He miscalculated the timing on his trip home, however, and before he'd even reached the mouth of Wolf Canyon, he realized that it would be dark well before he reached the marshy area in front of the buried tomb. He briefly considered making camp and starting from here in the morning, but Hattie and Robert were expecting him today, and he didn't want to worry them. He'd also been away from his business for six days, and he couldn't really afford to be gone even as long as he had been. He needed to get back to work.
Besides, he'd be traveling along the opposite wall of the canyon, just as he had on the trip out.
Leland had never been formally taught in the magic arts, growing up in the post-Isabella days, but he instinctively wove a spell of protection around himself, something that, while not perfect, would at least afford him some defense on his journey.
He'd brought with him a lantern, but in the cavernous open space of the middle canyon the light illuminated only the section of trail immediately before him, throwing all else into even deeper gloom. He wanted to put down the fear he felt to imagination, but the horse seemed spooked and jittery, too, and as they traveled farther into the darkness, into the increasingly cold night, it became ever more difficult to pretend nothing was out of the ordinary. He thought of Samuel Hawks........ It was more something' l felt.
Leland felt it, too, and though he knew he would never be able to describe it, he understood now what his friend had meant. For the horror that enveloped him, that seemed to seep inside him to his very bones, was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced. The air itself seemed wrong, the texture of the breeze unnatural. All of his senses were assaulted, and he saw shapes in the blackness, heard soft sounds that should not have been here, smelled wafting odors unlike any he had ever come across, and he tasted in his mouth the foulness of the grave.