Ancient Echoes (29 page)

A man with an air of authority stepped forward from the
others. His brown hair, gray hair at the temples, had tight waves, and his
heavy-lidded eyes looked as if they'd seen all the sorrows of the world. “I'm
Thaddeus Kohler, the mayor of this village. I bid you welcome.”

“Mayor?”
Rempart said, standing
straighter. “Then you must be a man of law. These are a group of students and
I'm a professor. Please help us get back to civilization—”

“Are we not civilized?” Kohler
interrupted,
arms out, palms upward.

Rempart gawked.

“Who are you people?” Melisse demanded. “And what is this
place?”

Kohler gave her a long, lingering gaze, as if simultaneously
surprised, amused, and impressed that she would speak up so boldly. “We are
simple villagers.
Nothing more.”
He asked their names and
then introduced his companions, a jaunty, smiling Gus Webber, a youthful and
serious Will Durham, and one he called the elder of the group, Ben Olgerbee,
although he couldn’t have been much over fifty.

“What village is this?” Rempart asked. “How did it come to
be here? Do you have telephones, or other communication with the outside
world?”

“As for your last question, I’m afraid not.” Kohler’s face
was stern. “As to the first, we found the village empty when we arrived.”

A look of dismay passed between Rempart and Melisse. “We
simply want to get home,” Rempart said. “I'm sure there's a huge reward for
anyone who helps us return. Can you do that?”

“The only true reward,” Kohler said, his eyes blazing and
his voice low and rumbling, “is an eternal one after a life well spent. Now,
please join us for supper.”

They called the large central building the “community
house.” The inside consisted of two rooms, a gathering room on the first floor
and an upstairs sleeping loft. A long wooden table and six chairs stood in the
center of the gathering room. Several work tables lined the walls and atop them
were a variety of old tools and strange implements. Animal furs were piled in a
corner, and pottery bowls and dishes had been stacked on primitive shelves. A
large fireplace and hearth held crude pots, and cooking utensils. On a grate, a
kettle of stew cooked. Rempart and the students were so
hungry,
they were nearly brought to tears by its smell.

A ladder led to the loft which had both shuttered windows
and a door that currently opened to an eight foot drop, and gave Melisse an
idea of how high the snow piled up here in winter.

Everything was rustic and ill-formed, which was a surprise
given that each man wore an expensive, modern firearm on his hip. It seemed as
if the university group had fallen into a well-armed Dark Ages.

The men brought extra chairs and stools with them. The
university group sat on one side of the table, and five of the village men on
the opposite side. Ben Olgerbee kept watch in the tower while the others ate.
Melisse could see the villagers truly believed that something dangerous was out
there. Not only, as Sam Black and Arnie Tieg had said, did dangers lie outside
the village at
night,
apparently the inside was also
unsafe if unguarded.

Thaddeus Kohler stood. His companions bowed their heads as
he muttered in low, sonorous tones, “May Almighty God grant us blessings for
that which we are about to receive, and we give Him thanks for bringing these
people to us.”

Something about the prayer caused a chill along Melisse’s
shoulders. The feeling passed quickly, however, as Will Durham dished out the
rabbit stew, and Rachel carried a bowl to each of the diners. They served
a flat
, hard bread with it. The stew tasted delicious. Even
Brandi ate without complaining.

No one spoke until the meal ended.

“Want something to help wash down your supper?” Gus Webber
asked with a grin, holding a jug toward Rempart. He explained that they
distilled wild tubers to make the liquor. Melisse watched Rempart take a sip and
gag, much to the amusement of the villagers. When the jug came to her, she
found it as potent and raw as pure alcohol. The village men’s reaction to the
moonshine made it clear that drinking a good quantity was part of their evening
ritual.

The villagers attempted to be friendly, but Melisse saw
something cold and calculating in them, especially in the way they looked at
her, Rachel and Brandi. Clearly, they hadn’t been around women in quite a
while.

The only one who didn’t make her uneasy was Will Durham. His
gentle brown eyes regarded the university group with a compassion that seemed
genuine, but also sad. She wondered why.

“Maybe you can tell us now, Mr. Kohler,” she began as the
jug took a second trip around the table, “how you and your men came to be here,
and why you have made this your home instead of leaving?”

Kohler glanced at his men, one by one, as if to gain their
agreement before he spoke. Several nodded. “We arrived here over a dozen years
ago. No matter how hard we tried, we were unable to return to our land, to our
own people. This is a strange place with unnatural creatures the likes of which
we have never before witnessed. We watch the pillars in hopes that one day,
someone will come through them who understands them, and will be able to lead
us back.”

“My, God,” Brandi blurted out in distress, then clasped her
hands to her mouth.

“Surely,” Rempart said, “you aren’t suggesting we’re trapped
here.”

“We’ve tried everything, but the pillars do not change. They
are unmoved by our plight.”

“You make them sound as if they’re alive,” Rempart said with
a nervous chuckle.

“Aren’t they?” Kohler stood. “It is time to retire for the
night. Durham, take the two men to the stable and make up bedding for them. The
women will sleep here,
alone and undisturbed.
Tieg, tell your cousin he
must guard more alertly than usual tonight, for we have precious newcomers to
protect.” He glanced at the women. “I leave it to you to clean up after Mr.
Olgerbee, who is now in the guard tower, has completed his supper. All must
work here.”

With that, he and the other men left the community house.

o0o

This was a strange land, filled with strange noises, Michael
thought, as he and the others made camp after another day of wandering.

A guttural sound caused him to stop setting up his tent,
every nerve alert. A banshee-like shriek made his blood run cold. What was out
there? Whatever it was had been following them. At times he noticed a musty
smell. At other times, a sharp, acrid stink. The air would turn thick, as if it
were humid, but without moisture.

And beyond all that was Lady Hsieh. Was she real, or was he
going mad? He couldn’t tell anyone about her. Not Charlotte, who was the most
sympathetic but the most realistic. Certainly not Jake, who would definitely
want to send him to a looney
bin
. Not even Quade, who
had the most understanding of this unnatural state, but seemed strangely devoid
of human understanding or empathy.

Quade bothered him more and more as time went on. The man
watched and thought. He explained theory, but offered little explanation of
what was happening here. Quade knew a lot more than he said.

Michael didn’t trust him.

MELISSE DIDN'T KNOW what to make of
the village men. They treated her and the others well enough, except that Lionel
and Ted were forced to sleep in the stable.

The first full day, the villagers taught them to dig up a
small round root, a sort of primitive parsnip, and mash them so that they could
be dried as meal for the winter. The village men seemed to be planning for them
to remain through the winter and needed to increase the amount of food stored.
It also meant the village men didn't plan to kill them...at least not all of
them, and not right away.

Today, they were separated and all given a variety of
chores.

Melisse grew tired of shelling beans and stepped out of the
community house and looked around, Thaddeus Kohler, the village “mayor,”
chopped wood some distance away. The close-mouthed man aimed to intimidate with
his stern, military bearing. She decided to see what she could find out from
him.

“Do you think we'll have time to get out of these mountains
before the winter snows hit?” she asked when she reached his side.

He stood his ax on end as his gaze raked over her. “Why
would you want to try? It could be dangerous.”

“We want to go home.”

“Not a good idea.” He returned to chopping.

“We just need some food, some warm clothes,” Melisse said.
“We had bad luck and our things were stolen. Perhaps you can tell us how to get
out of here.”

He slammed the ax into the stump of a tree trunk where it
stuck. “You aren't going anywhere,” he said brusquely.

“Are we prisoners?” she asked.

His sharply angled face crinkled into a grotesque smile.
“You don't have to be. There's nowhere for you to go. The sooner you get used
to it, the better off you'll be.” He continued chopping.

She put her hand on his arm. “You're not getting off that
easily. What is this place? Why can't we find anything we've known—no towns, no
highways?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course you do! Tell me!”

He looked down at her hand with a smirk, as if he found her
toughness amusing.

She drew back her hand, and couldn't hide the bleakness in
her voice as she added, “We went between two pillars and our world changed.”

His formidable presence bristled, but then his eyes met
hers. The temptation struck to turn and run from what she saw there—a deep
all-consuming coldness coupled with understanding almost beyond human ken—as if
he knew so much about the world and life that he no longer cared.

“So it did,” he muttered. “I must remind myself how
frightened all of you must be. How peculiar you must find all this, and find
us.”

He fell silent. She struggled to remain and speak to him.
“Have you been here long?”

His jaw clenched. He looked at her a long while before he
spoke. “Yes, more than thirteen years. My men and I were sent here on a mission
and have been unable to go back.”

She sucked in her breath. “Thirteen years?”

He nodded.

“What...what kind of mission?”

He shrugged.
“Scouting.
Nothing special.
I was a major in the Army, retired—”

“The U.S. Army?” she blurted.

“Yes. Why?”

She almost said something about his accent. None of the men
here sounded like Americans, although their accents weren’t “foreign-sounding”
either.
“Just curious.
Please continue.”

“I saw this as a way to pick up some easy money.
Central Idaho—severe climate, worse topography, grizzlies, maybe
even a wolf pack or two—and then home.
I could handle it. Or so I
thought.”

She nodded.

“You?” he
asked,
his eyes like gray
flint.

She told him about Rempart and the anthropology students and
their field trip to find the pillars, “and then home,” she added. He somehow
found it within himself to smile as her words echoed his.

“Did you build those cabins?” she asked.

“No. We found everything here. I suspected it's what we were
sent to find. I heard rumors of some expedition years ago—around the time of
Lewis and Clark—that got lost in this wilderness. They must be the ones who
built the cabins and lived here.”

“And then?” she asked.

“I don't know. No graveyard, if that's what you're asking,”
he replied. “Maybe that means they got out, that they found a way home. For
their sakes, I hope so.”

“That's a nice thought,” she said. “But doubtful. Do you
have any proof?”

A strained, fierce look came over him.
“Proof?
You question me?”

The sudden change in him startled her. “I simply want to
know—”

“Enough! What is of more interest to me is the here and
now.” He stepped closer to her, at once threatening and something more as his
voice turned soft, cold, and deadly. “For example, I know that you and your
friends need us far more than we do you. If you died at this moment, it
wouldn't affect us one bit. And you could die or disappear in an instant.” He
snapped his finger. “Like that.”

Her eyes widened at the sudden implied threat, and he gave
his cruel, skeletal smile again. “Also,” he continued, his hand swiftly
clasping her jaw and lifting so her eyes met his, “I'm all that stands between
you three females and some of my men giving into what I'll call their baser
instincts. I suggest you keep that in mind as well.”

He walked away.

His words, his implied threats, worried her. And apparently,
the village men had no more idea of how to leave here than she did.

But she knew how to keep warm in a storm, to build snow
shelters, and to use her flint to burn combustible materials. Sacks of dried
meal were in the storage building. If she stole one or two sacks, she could
make it last long enough to get out of the mountains to lower, warmer climates.

If she got away, and somehow, miraculously perhaps, managed
to find her way out of this strange land, she could return with help to rescue
the others. She felt confident she could do it, and equally sure Lionel and the
students could not.

That night, Melisse used the pretext of going to the
outhouse as a means to reach the storage hut. She first wrapped thick fur
blankets around herself like a hooded robe to keep warm, and then used a
smaller blanket to make up a knapsack in which she put a sack of meal plus
knives, flints, candles and anything else she could easily carry that might be
helpful, and set out.

The village men guarded their guns and rifles well.