Jumlin's Spawn

Published by Evernight Publishing at Smashwords

http://www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2011 Melody Clark

ISBN:
978-1-926950-94-5

Cover Artist: LF Designs

Editor: Angela Oesterreich

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or
distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this
book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without
written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and
places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

Melody Clark

Copyright © 2011

Epilogue

There stood only one Black Hill of a different color;
and yet, it was the blackest hill of all.

The man had climbed the trail to Angel Peak for as
long as he could remember. He had seen this vista through the eyes
of a baby, a boy and a man. In those years, spring clung to the
fresh grasslands across the tribal plains. Now, the Black Hills
seemed gray; the grasslands dry and dead. The only sound he could
hear was a thundering wind or a deadly calm, and both sounds blew
in from the city.

He watched the old man walk slowly from the inside
the house to the outside edge of his porch. On the porch sat a big,
swayback porch swing. Nearby, a middle-aged, black-braided woman
sat with a cast iron pot between her legs. Her hands busily broke
the backs of pea pods and spilled their bounty with steady thumps
into the pot. Just beyond her, a young man watched over a little
boy as the child dragged a toy metal truck over hand-built dirt
mounds all around him.

The man on the peak recognized the old metal toy
truck had once been his own.

The man who watched from Angel Peak thought the
little boy looked something like the boy he once had been. He hoped
the boy would climb the mountain one day, too. But, he prayed the
boy would never set foot in the caves. Angel Peak Man knew too well
that, inside of the mountain, lurked old and bad things. He had
seen them himself - big, black, feathery demon angels, hell birds
with wings big enough to smother all the breath out of the
world.

The man at Angel Peaks had not survived the caves.
Not completely. He had come to know the hell birds far too well. No
longer part of the world of the old man, the young people or the
boy, the man at Angel Peaks had been bound to the peaks forever.
Well, almost forever.

“Čhaŋtóčhignake, Chaske,” he whispered to the wind.
He wondered if that young boy had ever been taught Lakota.

The Angel Peak man had been told the time had come.
There were three strangers approaching from the city. They didn't
know their path. They could not know their future.

The man on Angel Peak only knew that, of the four of
them, three would live, and one would die.

But it would be a joyous ending.

Chapter One

She missed South Dakota.  She missed it more
than she might have missed her knees. Not that she would admit
that, even to herself. New Orleans had been a fascinating place to
wander, but her roots had long ago grown deep into Rapid City
soil.  Walking through the airport terminal, her stomach
muscles twisted into tiny Gordian knots inside her.  She
reveled in the easy familiarity of coming home but still felt the
chill of apprehension.   

She hadn’t been scared until she saw Yancey and
Oliver hovering by the luggage return.  They stood beside
her luggage, already plucked from the carousel. Their very
appearance made her want to turn and run, but she stayed. Somehow,
she stayed.

Oliver appeared as light and Irish-American as Yancey
was dark and Sioux.  They appeared visual opposites and, yet,
were more alike than either man knew.  They had been her two
best friends in the world since fifth grade. And she had just
turned thirty.

Yancey’s long black hair ran past his shoulders
now.  He stared at her with black eyes filled with as much
hurt as anger.  Oliver scowled…though Oliver never scowled…and
Oliver was scowling at her.

The last time she had seen either of them, she’d told
her two best friends to get the hell out of her life.  At the
time, she felt abandoned and discarded.  At least now, she
felt in control of her own life.

She drew back a little as Yancey reached for her
luggage. “I can carry that myself,” she said, trying to keep the
handle.

“We picked you up, so I’m carrying it,” Yancey said,
pulling it away from her while Oliver collected the rest of her
smaller bags.  “I parked the car in the day lot.”

“I didn’t think you parked it on the runway,” she
replied, “and, for the record, I didn’t ask you to pick me
up.”

“No, we offered, okay?” Oliver cut in from Elfie’s
other side.  “Now, can we please save the screaming at each
other until we reach somewhere private, like the car?”

She pressed gently at her eyes, the miles she had
travelled weighing heavily on her words, “I don’t want to scream at
anybody.”

“Good,” Yancey said, “Neither do we.”

Yancey drove them out of the airport lot, then headed
east on Highway 44 where the road splits -- one part headed toward
the Cheyenne River basin and the other made tracks for Rapid
City.   

Elfie gestured toward her old hometown, the so-called
star of the west, “We’re going to see your Captain?”

Yancey murmured an affirmation. “He has a few
questions. Nothing major.”

She grimaced, staring out at the familiar blur of
road.  “Let’s just hope I have the answers.”

****

Captain Darwin always looked like a man in a
perpetual search for his car keys.  No matter where he was,
even in his car, even with the keys in the ignition, he always
seemed to be searching for them.  Now, he sat at his desk,
hunting-and-pecking at a keyboard until Yancey, Oliver and Elfie
walked into his peripheral vision.  He turned sharply toward
them and nodded Elfie toward a chair. 

He tilted casually into his own chair, his hand
sliding with easy familiarity into the handle of his coffee
cup.  Out of office mode, back in Captain mode, same as
always. “It’s good to see you, Elfie,” he said, pulling folders
from a far pile toward him.  “I’m glad to hear you’re
back.”

“I’m here,” she said, shrugging.  “I don’t know
about back.”

Darwin smiled reassuringly.  “I appreciate your
coming in.  I’m just trying to piece this whole Professor
Duryea thing together.  We’re hoping you might remember
something we need to know.”

She shifted forward in her chair.  “I’ll tell
you what I know.”

He sipped his coffee. “I remember that you left your
job here to work for Professor Duryea a year ago. In what capacity
did you work for him?”

Elfie cast a look back at Yancey, who stood
protectively beside her chair, and Oliver, occupying a chair behind
her.  Finally, she looked over at Captain Darwin and
nodded.  “I took a college course of Narvel Duryea’s when I
was in grad school. A while after that, he offered me a field
anthropology position with him. I passed on it then; but later,
when I decided to leave Rapid City, I contacted him. The offer
still stood, so I accepted it.”

“It seemed to me, at the time, your leaving was
rather hasty.  You couldn’t even give us three weeks of notice
in forensics.”  Darwin glanced back at her friends.  “I
understand the three of you had something of a falling out. This is
generally regarded as, well, the real reason you moved to New
Orleans.”

She folded her hands before her, trying to preserve
some illusion of calm. “Yes,” she said, making clear with the empty
sound of her voice that there would be no further information added
to her response.

Darwin rubbed at an eyebrow, in thought.  “How
much did he confide in you about his activities?”

“Not at all.”

“Then the two of you weren’t personal friends?”

She chuckled dryly.  “No. He was a…taciturn
individual to the end, okay? There were elements of his work that
I've only learned about since his death.”

Darwin scrunched up his face with a grin. “A taciturn
individual?”

“He was a suspicious asshole, is that better?”

“That sounds more like you,” Darwin said, laughing a
little. “I was wondering if you have any idea why Duryea came out
here by himself.”

Elfie shrugged at the memory.  “He said he was
doing some research for a new lecture series.  He’d made some
momentous mythological discovery, according to him.  And, he
wanted to research a theory he called the Lakota Book of the
Dead.”

Darwin scrunched up his brow again, this time in
surprise. “What the hell might that be?”

Elfie shook her head. “I think it dealt with his
labyrinthine theory of links between ancient Egypt, Ireland and
pre-Columbian Indians.  It’s hardly a new idea.  He
posited that the striges, which supposedly was an Egyptian vampire
race, were a direct ancestor of Jumlin’s spawn. He thought it had
connections to a ton of different cultures, including the
Irish.”

“So what the hell is a Jumlin’s spawn?” Darwin
asked.

Yancey grinned and shook his head. “He's the Badlands
Boogeyman, Cap. Jumlin was the evil spawn of Laughing Bear, who's
like the Lakota Count Dracula. He went off and had little Laughing
Bear Cubs. It's strictly Halloween crap.”

“Maybe so, but interesting, given the circumstances
around Duryea's death,” Darwin said.

Elfie sat up more, paying closer attention. “What
circumstances?”

Darwin pushed the top file from the folder pile
toward her.  “That's the medical examiner's findings on
Professor Duryea's body. Take a gander. Riddle me that.”

She picked up the file and skimmed over it until her
attention became riveted on a word.  “Exsanguinous?  You
mean he’d bled out?”

“He was bloodless.  Drained,” the Captain said.
“I’d say he was empty as a beer barrel at a college kegger. And
he’s not the only one.  There have been ten buffalo
exsanguinations in the vicinity.  On top of this, we’ve had
women disappear.  Another man vanished but was found dead, in
much the same manner as Duryea.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said softly, shaking her
head.