Angel Fall (8 page)

Suddenly Bellwind’s voice echoed from the bottom of the stairs, “Amanda, it’s time. Walk down, yes, walk down, my child.”

Turning away from the Brightness, Amanda Lancaster moved down through the blue shadows of the tower toward agony and glory, called to the singing mists around a Crimson Throne.

T
he great sickle moon cast a dull redness in the fog as a raft drifted away from Bellwind’s island toward a mysterious shore. In one corner, beneath a blanket, huddled Amanda with the baby in her arms. The little boy was asleep cuddled in a sling against her breast. She could feel his gentle breathing. Nearby was a backpack filled with food.

Suddenly she was very lonely. Somehow everything was different down below. She looked back—past the trees and vines at the island’s edge. Above them she could see the tower—the place where she had stood. Was it her imagination or did it actually change into the form of a beautiful woman—almost like an angel looking down? There came the peal of a silver bell and the ghostly image faded.

As the sound echoed over the water, it was answered from far away by a raging cry and a series of trembling wails. After that…stillness. Water lapped against the raft.

The journey had begun.

A
n ant crawled out of a thick patch of brown hair…across a dirty forehead…and onto the bridge of a nose. Alex jerked straight up and brushed it off.

Daylight.

He stared around. Where was he? Two dusty shafts of sunlight glimmered high above, and a dizzying twenty feet beneath him lay a dirt floor. He was on a ledge. It took Alex a moment to collect all the pieces. Was he actually inside a statue? Could all of that have been real? He remembered the eyes and the shrieking voice.

Definitely a nightmare, he decided. He had gotten sick on the raft. He must have had a fever. That was the only logical explanation.

Rolling over on his stomach, he looked out through the crack in the wall.

Well, the city was real. A dismal sun had risen over the ancient, vine-choked wreck. It was an ugly place. He wondered if he had come ashore somewhere in South America. Maybe there were natives close by. Or even archaeologists. Somebody had to be digging in this mess. But then another thought. What if the natives were headhunters? What if they collected heads and shrunk them to the size of potatoes? Of all the possible ways to end your life, the least attractive had to be hanging in a hut with strings running through your lips. Definitely something to be avoided.

As he gazed down at the street, he saw the dogs, hundreds of them still sitting just as they had been the night before, looking up at the statue in eerie silence. They were so motionless they could almost be statues themselves. He stared harder…and rubbed his eyes.

They
were
statues.

And they were crumbled and worn as though they’d been sitting there for a thousand years. But how could they have seemed so real last night? He could still hear them raging and crashing against the door. He’d been totally nuts. Absolutely wacko.

But then he squinted through the crack. Down the street a block away something
was
moving. Another dog. And unquestionably this one was real. He watched as it trotted briskly in his direction with its tongue lolling out as though on a morning stroll. When it arrived beneath the statue, it stopped, sat down, cocked its head, and
barked
. It looked a little like the dog that had been on the plane, but how in the world could it have gotten here? As he stared in amazement, the old mutt jumped up and chased its tail, barking. Then it sat down and seemed to look straight at him. Alex laughed out loud. The dog pricked up its ears, tilted its head, and went around to the metal door and began scratching. Climbing down from the ledge, Alex lifted the latch and cracked the door open.

“What’d you do, lose the old lady and swim ashore? You must be a good swimmer. You look different.”

He was sure it was the same dog, yet it was smaller than he remembered.
Much
smaller. Like normal size. He told himself that he had been half asleep and must not have seen it clearly on the plane. Everything else was the same—well, no dagger teeth, just regular ones—but all the rest, the scars and ragged fur.

“You are one old bag of fleas. And I guess you look friendly enough. So what happens if I let you in? You gonna bite me?”

As he opened the door, the dog trotted back out into the street, sat down, and stared at him.

“Here, dog. Come here, boy.”

The only response was a slight tilt of the head.

“I said,
come here
.”

What followed was an embarrassing series of attempts to get the animal to obey. These included hand gestures, verbal wheedling, insults, and whistles, all to no avail. If anything, the dog seemed to be enjoying the show. It continued staring at him and grinning, but without budging an inch. Finally Alex gave up.

“Stay out there, then. That’s fine with me.”

He was about to shut the door when it walked over and licked his hand. The move was so startling that for a moment he was speechless.

“So you aren’t deaf after all.”

He scratched its ears, then tried to pull it inside. This was no easy task, because it had no collar. And clearly,
inside
was not where it wanted to go. Finally it jerked away, grabbed his sleeve, and tried to drag him in the opposite direction.

“Hey, stop that.”

But the dog was very insistent.

“You got spit all over my sleeve.”

Trudging back into the middle of the street, it started barking.

“Be quiet. Shut up. You’re gonna wake up the whole city.”

As they stared at each other, Alex became aware of a rumbling in his stomach.

“Okay, you’re right. I can’t stay in here forever. I gotta find food. What have you been eating?”

The dog turned and trotted off.

“Hey, where you going?”

Pausing, it looked back, then continued on. Alex knew that he had to make a decision. If he was ever going to leave his hiding place, there was no better time than now. Maybe the mutt would protect him. Cautiously he stepped outside.

“All right, I’m coming.”

The animal waited. Alex gulped. To follow it, he had to walk past the dog statues. They were huge, almost as tall as he was. And the memory of the night before was so creepy that he half expected them to come alive and tear him apart. Why would anybody put hundreds of dog statues in the middle of a street? It didn’t make sense. Finally he was beyond them. But even then he kept looking back to make sure they hadn’t moved.

The old dog led him to the fountain, and there they both took a long drink.

“Okay, here’s the deal. Your job is to find me breakfast. And I don’t want any rotten stuff. You got that? Just find me something.”

Grinning, as though he knew exactly what Alex had said, the animal walked away. As Alex followed, he told himself that this might not be the wisest idea. The mutt wasn’t going to lead him to a Taco Bell. But he
was
a seeing-eye dog. Maybe he was trained to take orders like “go find food.” Blind people had to eat. And sometimes wasn’t it possible that they could get stuck in weird places…like
dead cities?

Why sure, that made perfect sense.

The city was like a maze, and very soon Alex was hopelessly lost. His guide ambled up one street and down another, past hundreds of monstrous piles that looked like buildings but probably weren’t. Often he thought he heard scurrying sounds, but nothing ever appeared. They were headed inland and the walking wasn’t easy. The streets were clotted with rotting vines, and it was a struggle just to stay on his feet. And not one thing around him ever started looking
normal
. Creepiest of all, there were ugly carvings everywhere—twisted serpents with gargoyle faces, giant beetles with long tweezer-thin legs, and hundreds of roach-things with stingers in their tails. The roach-things seemed to have been an especially popular motif. They came in a variety of delightful sizes.

The whole place was beyond disgusting.

The farther he walked, the more he began to believe that it wasn’t a city at all. What if it was a giant graveyard? He thought about the ghosts that had passed so close to him. What if they hadn’t been a nightmare? What if they had been coming home to their graves?

The “city” was even larger than Alex had thought. But the old dog seemed to know exactly where he was going. He moved at the same brisk pace, never stopping, even when Alex had to crawl through slimy tunnels of green vine-gunk. Invariably he emerged, cursing every leaf that had smeared him. Eventually he started cursing the dog. But the animal didn’t seem to care. It never looked back.

After an hour the “buildings” became smaller and the vines thinned out. Which made walking easier but didn’t improve Alex’s mood. The rumbling in his belly had become a cramp.

“Hey, you stupid mutt, I’m starving to death. They eat dogs in China, you know! I could go for a big Western bacon dog-burger right now.”

No response.

Finally they entered an avenue lined with overgrown gardens. It was under a large tree with a limb that jutted out over the street that the animal stopped and looked up. Every branch was heavy with golden fruit. Suddenly Alex’s hunger was overwhelming. Picking a piece, he examined it. It was soft and smelled like roses. He was just about to take a bite, when he stopped.
Strange fruit could kill you
. It wasn’t so much dying of poison that bothered him, but the thought of going irretrievably nuts with a bad case of diarrhea on top of it. If seawater could do what it had done to his brain, the wrong kind of fruit might turn him into a howling, pooping maniac. In spite of his hunger, he was about to toss it away when the dog walked over to a piece that had fallen on the ground…and bit into it.

Alex stared. “A dog that eats fruit. Did they train you to do that in seeing-eye school?”

He took another bite.

“Okay, I get it. I just hope you’re not stupid enough to kill us both. I guess we’re gonna find out.”

As though forced to take awful medicine, Alex bit into the piece he was holding. Never had anything tasted so delicious. Fear vanished as the sweet juice dripped down his chin. The flavor was hard to describe—one mouthful was like cherries, the next like peaches; there was even a little pineapple in it. He ate and ate, making a pig of himself. When he couldn’t hold another bite, he stuck half a dozen pieces in his shirt. Instantly the old dog trotted off again.

“Hey, wait. Where you going? I like this place. Let’s stay here awhile.”

He didn’t stop. Irritated, but not knowing what else to do, Alex followed. A few minutes later they turned a corner and he found himself at the edge of the city. In front of him stood a massive arch with broken walls on either side. Beyond lay a road leading into a gloomy forest. Without slowing, the dog headed toward it.

Alex hesitated. He didn’t like the look of it, but the alternative was spending another night in the city and finding out whether the ghosts were real. Not a difficult choice. Alex hurried toward the forest.

The road through the trees was ancient. It would have disappeared long ago if it hadn’t been made of heavy paving stones. For centuries iron wheels had rolled over them creating deep ruts and ridges. After that must have passed centuries when no one used the road at all, because the stones were broken and heavy with slick moss. It was like trying to walk on clumps of greasy cotton. But if walking
on
the road was nasty, walking
beside
it was worse. The ground was blanketed with thorny weeds that could send you sprawling. Cursing under his breath, Alex chose to slip and slide in the ruts.

Hours passed…and the dog was tireless. On and on it loped through the gloom with Alex stumbling after it. The deeper they went into the forest, the more oppressive it became. An eerie, dead kind of feeling hung in the trees. Other than the dog, never did he see another animal or even hear the chirp of a bird.

Several times they stopped for water. Each time Alex ate a piece of fruit.

Then it was on again.

Daylight turned into twilight, and the forest transformed into a surreal world of giant, misty shadows until Alex could barely see. After a particularly bruising fall he yelled, “That’s it, I’m finished.” He was about to slump to the ground when the animal ran up, took hold of his pants, and started pulling.

“Hey, stop that. Get away from me.”

But it didn’t let go.

“Jerk dog.” He kicked it as hard as he could. The blow landed on the animal’s stomach and it groaned. As it let loose, a strange hurt came into its eyes. Instantly Alex was filled with guilt. “Okay, I didn’t mean to do it that hard. But you gotta stop pulling on my clothes. I’m tired and I can’t go any farther.”

To his disgust, the mutt took hold of his pants and started pulling again.

“I don’t believe this.”

But it only did it for a moment; then it ran across the road and disappeared into a jumble of trees and bushes. Then it barked, clearly wanting Alex to follow. Aggravated, Alex crossed the road and pushed through the weeds. He hadn’t gone more than twenty feet when he came to a large boulder. The dog disappeared behind it, and when he followed, he found the entrance to a shallow cave—the perfect place to spend the night. Grumpily he crawled in and discovered a soft bed of pine needles.

“Why didn’t you tell me this was where you were going? It would have made things a lot easier.” It was a dumb thing to say, but he was too tired to care. A moment after lying down, he was asleep.

Darkness came…and with it a chill. The dog never closed his eyes. He lay at the entrance to the cave, watching and listening. And while he watched, Alex slept. The chill never touched him. It couldn’t get past the crimson shadow at the entrance that loomed like a living wall.