Harlan County Horrors (22 page)

The
climb down the steps of the temple-mold earlier proved
disorienting, so I took it slow. Plenty of the soldiers and agents
hung around, taking photographs, but they let me walk free. I
remembered to count the steps, like in Central America. Just like
the Mayans pyramids, there were 364 steps, and the last one made
365. A mighty big coincidence that this total equaled the number of
days in a year.

When the agents shined a violet light on the rocky surface, it
glittered like glass. I knelt at the bottom of the inverted pyramid
and felt a fine dust…but it was not sand, exactly. On my gloves, I
saw it glitter…like crushed crystal.

My
body trembled as I slipped off my gloves. My hiking boot stepped
out of the bottom area as I stepped over near the artifacts. The
straight lines of the pyramid outline seemed dented as I scuffed my
boots in the glassy substance. I absently wondered if a giant
stomped these impressions out with the heel of huge
boots.

Agent Alexander and few soldiers stood ten yards above me on
the steps. I looked at the artifacts closer and flexed my hands.
The fragments appeared to be the remains of a clay bowl and a
section of a spear. On the spear appeared to be a chip of some
sort, white and fused to the wood…but when I touched it with my
flesh, I knew it to be bone.

And
the rest was history.

No
longer was I Elijah Blackthorn, an American with Apache blood…but
my eyes opened into the world of one called Tayanita. My brain grew
afire as the information flooded fast and had to be false. The
Indians of the area were sometimes Cherokees, Shawnees or some
other offshoot, but I was a Quadrule native in what would become
Harlan County. My skin was not the clichéd “red Indian” of past
tales, nor was it the tan hue of my own. My flesh was nearly
Caucasian, perhaps no darker than a Spaniard.

However, I was not in the underground spot where I had picked
up the relics. I was outside in warm air. The sun washed over my
nude body as I ran with my tribe up a long series of stone steps.
Indeed, we scaled a step pyramid identical to those I helped to
clear away vines from in the Yucatan. Yet, there was no such object
in Harlan County! We gave out a war howl as we rushed up the steps.
It was so insane, for the Cherokee were known to be warlike and the
Quadrule a peaceful people…

Was
I seeing a different time in Tayanita’s life? Did he attack those
ancient ones in the Yucatan far from what we call Kentucky?
Something felt wrong about that assumption. When I looked off the
side of the pyramid, the distant lands looked oddly like the ones I
just had lain down in, hemmed by rolling mountains.

Impossible! There are no step pyramids in
Kentucky!

I
knew what Tayanita knew, and that was what drove me to the edge of
madness. The rush of information was hard to grasp, but flooded
across my mind, ready or not.

Our
warriors were almost gone, driven to extinction by invaders from
far-off lands. Some believed them to be the very gods form the sky
themselves. Tayanita did not accept this and set out to prove this
wrong. These folk we fought had no scent of settlers, as history
would come to know them.

One
of the foreign men came out of the apex of the temple and started
down. Behind him appeared more men, but at a slower gait. The
charging man unsheathed a gleaming blade, and I roared my
defiance.

I
raised a long flute-like object to my lips and blew through it.
Immediately, a small dart flew from the weapon and lodged in this
man’s neck. A look of shock spread on his face. He was no
tribesman, but a foreign born man as alien to these Quadrules as an
animal. He stood, frozen as one of my braves threw a tomahawk,
cleaving his skull in half. When he fell, I saw the skin of this
man was white. He was Caucasian, but these were not Conquistadors.
I saw my reflection on his sword and was taken aback briefly.
Surely, this reflection was the
true face
of the ancient Quadrule, a more civilized, complicated
sp
ecies…but who were these invaders? Their
vestments were strange, not Spanish…the era was all
wrong.

As
I thought my revelatory powers were showing me a mad vision of
impossibility, we stopped. For at that moment, the Mage of these
interlopers stepped onto the three hundred sixty-fifth stage of the
high temple. How did I surmise he was the Mage? He was dressed like
a Shriner or a member of a Masonic order. In each hand hung severed
heads, tethered down as if spiderwebs grew from his fingers. The
warriors with me refused to step forward as the heads
chanted
! Surely, it was
lunacy; surely, it was a trick to fool these primitive
men.

Tayanita understood fear, but it did not defeat him. He scoped
up the long, heavy sword the white man dropped and charged forward.
The Mage was somewhat surprised that I—he—never stopped in horror.
The sinister wizard raised both heads, and each severed face
howled. The two warriors nearest me gripped their skulls. Blood
spurted from the noses of my tribesmen. As they fell, convulsing, I
swung the blade, aiming at the heart of the Mage.

The
blow should have split the man at the collarbone and continued on
into his heart. The blade did cleave in, but stopped in a mesh of
metal clothing. Confused but undaunted, Tayanita drew back and
chopped the left hand from the Mage. The chanting head tumbled free
and headed down the structure, bouncing and leaving wet bloody
spots as it went. I brought up the heavy weapon, slicing between
the legs of the wizard. A high-pitched squeal echoed out as the
crude gelding ceased. I left the blade buried in the Mage’s pelvis,
gripped him by the metallic shirt, and threw him off the
temple.

I
ran into the apex of the pyramid, followed by many of my brothers.
“Show yourself,” I shouted in their old tongue, gripping my
tomahawk and the sword. “I shall eat the heart of a god and waste
on your bones!”

On
a single stone pillar sat an elderly man. His beard was white and
his skin shone pale, like the others. Over his face was a mask of
glass or crystal. His vestments were strange, but I can recall them
now. NO! It is foolishness! On either side of him sat two gleaming
orbs of crystal. When this grey man smiled, the globes glowed red.
I knew these were not globes and I drew back my arm to
throw.

Many of the brothers crumbled and fell. I felt the power in
the air that killed them. The hairs on my arms stood and heat
washed over me. I froze as I heard a hideous bellow from below us.
On the other side of the wizard I heard a thudding, crushing sound.
I heard the screams of the lost, and I heard wet, squelching sounds
echo.

Summoning every strength of my ancestors, I threw the
tomahawk. It struck the wizard between the eyes and split the
crystal mask on his face. His head was unharmed and he wore a look
of shock. Something told me I had but one chance to act. I ran
forward, shouting a war cry…and the man focused on me. The globes
at his hands—
crystal
skulls
—glowed scarlet. Something echoed in
my skull as I collided with the wizard. The long blade entered his
body, but I hardly had the will to drive it through him. I swept
him off the slab and we fell down into a deep chasm. Stretching out
before us was an empty shell of the temple arising from the
floor…and an identical triangle growing deeper into the earth. As
we fell, the man cursed me. The sword fell free and the weight of
it disappeared from my mind. I could see strange creatures in the
shell of the temple, things unnamable; hideous beasts with hairy
legs and tentacles around their bodies…with insectoid eyes and
heads like toads.

I
fell on top of the wizard and felt his body break as I took him
down. My air was gone and the world became dim as I looked back up.
The crazy beasts stomped all around my damaged body. The ends of
their hairy legs terminated in giant hooves, like something on a
beast of burden. One picked up the wizard and opened its toadish
mouth. Tiny tusks, not unlike those of a warthog, curled out and
inserted into the wizard’s ribs. They started to suck the outlander
into their mouth and his body relaxed like dead leaves.

I
tried to raise my flute to fire a dart, but my arms were paralyzed.
The creature towered over me, and its hungry roar filled me with
terror.

And
then it was over.

“
It was bad,” I muttered to Agent Alexander. Standing up with
my hands trembling, I looked at the small cleft in the earth where
confused soldiers still peered out.

“
Agent Alexander?” one of the soldiers called out. “Better
come look at this. Bring the doc if he feels up to it.”

Alexander smirked at me and said, “Ready to go back in there,
Blackthorn?”

I
trembled as I thought of the visions in which I’d seen the beast
before. It was an evil, malignant beast conjured from beyond time
itself. I’d seen it in Siberia in a vision years ago. An insane
doctor at Miskatonic University had tried to clone such a beast in
the belly of an elephant and I had stopped him. Now, I saw what had
made the local tribe lose their warriors and will to
fight.

I
looked into the chasm again and murmured, “No wonder so many
disappeared. They were meat for the beast.”

Just inside the chasm were soldiers carrying a long stone
object that almost looked like a crate. They put it down and
exhaled, taking the lid off. Alexander swore salty and then said,
“Damn! I told you not to move anything!”

The
soldier shrugged and said, “This was hidden right by the surface. I
cannot believe it was there. Doc, you gotta look at
this.”

Again, I ventured deeper in the cavern, my breathing heavy as
I looked inside the crate of stone. I took a few steps and swept
back my mane of black hair. Looking down, I noted again the dents
in the temple mold. Not dents, I knew after witnessing the
beasts.
Hoofprints
.

Alexander peered into the crate and looked at me. “Doc?
Elijah? Ya wanna explain this to me?”

He
reached down and moved a rotting cloth from the top of the crate.
Inside was a perfect crystal skull. Beside this were tubular
canisters. Alexander held up the cloth and asked, “Wanna explain
what you saw? How does a Crusader banner get in a cavern not opened
for seven hundred years?”

I
climbed out of the chasm and sat down again.

Alexander followed me, but his confrontational attitude was
gone. “Doc?”

“
It isn’t a Crusader banner,” I explained. “It is the blouse
of a jerkin worn by a member of the Knights Templar. I can tell by
the eight-pointed cross over the heart of the garment worn by the
man in my vision. Many think it was a Maltese cross, but that was
worn by the Hospitaler Knights. The garment is green, because it
was a worn by a Templar chaplain. I slew—Tayanita slew—a Templar
sergeant at arms on the steps of a temple that is gone from this
place.”

“
You are serious?”

I
nodded. “Most of the Templar order was slain or vanished on a fleet
of ships.”

Alexander gaped at me and then said, “Are you trying to tell
me that the Templars were here in Kentucky, seven hundred years
ago?”

I
rubbed my eyes with gloved fingers. “That is the
theory.”

The
coda to this tale is not satisfying, but it is funny in a broken
penis sort of way.

I
returned to Miskatonic University, mouth sealed and mind abuzz with
the new discoveries. Unsure about how the powers that be would be
with their take on history, or if I needed to fight them, thus
throwing my nuts in the machinery of history, I went back to my
usual routine. In cases like this, I usually heard from the men who
had previously contacted me. They would give me a call, drop in to
see me, or give me a check and a pat on the head.

Nothing happened. I didn’t hear jack, nor did I pass go and
get a cookie nor fruitcake arrangement.

Somewhat enraged, but used to the government hand job method,
I went about my usual life of searching for ancient relics.
However, I did make a few inquires to the agents I met. No words
returned. In time, this became annoying, but I knew what I had to
do.

After I ferreted out the prow of a Viking vessel rotting in
the mud near New Madrid, Missouri, I went over to Harlan County to
the site where the new underground base was to be. What I found was
aggravating, but par for the hand job course.

The
area was fenced off and a few trailers dwelled around the new mound
of dirt rising over the spot where the underground chamber
existed.

“
Landfill?” I said, gaping at the mound of dirt and debris in
the picturesque mountains.

One
of the workers, truly oblivious of anything under the earth, told
me, “Yeah, we got a sanction from the governor to use some cavern
underneath to fill in wastes for a good spell. The money to the
county is brilliant, and heck, they are bringing in crap from as
far a way as Chicago.”

I
turned away and said, “Talk about a sin against the
earth.”

“
You some sorta tree hugger?”

I
shook my long hair from side to side. “No, sir, but I hate it when
the earth is raped, her history, her life in any
regard.”