Fatalis

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The two eyes were about one hundred feet away, maybe four feet off the ground. Large and milky-white, they possessed an eerie luminescence in the gleam of his flashlight. Almost immediately upon spotting the eyes in the deep thicket, Grand shut off his light. If the owner hunted at night and lived in caves, the glare would only antagonize him.

"Wall?" Grand said.

"Yes, sir?"

"Shine your light on the ground."

The Wall did.

"Is it one of them?" Hannah asked.

"I don't know," Grand replied. "It could be an elk or an owl on a low branch-anything." Grand handed his light to Hannah to free up his hands. "Both of you back away from the sinkhole, slowly."

The Wall did as he was told.

Hannah hesitated. "I'm staying with you," she said.

"No," Grand insisted. "Right now we're a pack. If it's a cat we don't want to scare it into attacking."

Hannah started moving away.

"Keep your arms relaxed," Grand whispered. "Don't look at whatever's out there and don't crouch. It might think you're going to lunge. And don't take any pictures. Just a click could set this thing off."

Hannah and the Wall backed around the rocks along the outer side, near the edge of the slope. The boulders there were waist-high and would afford some protection if the animal attacked, maybe buy them a little time to start down the mountainside.

Grand didn't move. He wasn't surprised to find a large animal up here. He had felt its presence throughout the climb. Experienced predators, including humans, had an energy that the ancient Dorset Eskimos of northern Labrador had called moat-literally an unspoken voice that communicated strength. The earth elements had it and communicated it simply by "being" in a great number-rocks as mountains, water as the sea, and air as wind. In most wild species, the great number of moat is enhanced by a display of plumage, by inflating the cheeks, by shouting and chest-thumping, or by exposing teeth or a large set of horns or antlers or a large, shaggy mane.

Here, this close, the creature had moat that was off the chart. It was stronger than anything Grand had ever felt in the wild. It reminded him of how he felt on that childhood Grand Canyon trip, when his family went to Hoover Dam and he stood at the foot. Without seeing it, hearing it, or smelling it. Grand was still very much aware of the awesome might of the lake gathered on the other side. And Grand wasn't the only one who felt it. Whatever animals were in the thicket and surrounding area, they were not active like their brothers and sisters on the mountainside. They were deeply hidden.

When Hannah and the Wall reached the point where they'd come to the summit, the Wall backed over the side. Hannah stopped.

"What are you going to do?" she asked Grand.

"Try and learn something about what's out there," Grand replied.

"How?"

"By waiting here and seeing what it does."

"Why don't we let the sheriff do this?" the Wall asked.

"Because he'll come up here with a small army to try and take the animal down," Grand said. "A lot of people may die."

"Instead of just us," the Wall said.

"We're not going to die," Grand said. He began gathering small branches that had washed down from the treeline.

"This is crazy," the Wall said. "We're standing next to the animal's home. What do you think it's going to do?"

"That depends," Grand said. He was speaking in a very soft, melodic voice which he hoped would help put the creature at ease. At the same time he removed his Swiss Army knife from his pocket. He pulled the blade out slowly, silently. Then he knelt and cut slits near the thick end of the branches he'd gathered.

"What are you doing?" Hannah asked.

"Making a starburst," Grand said. When he was finished cutting the slits he took the flat stones from his pocket. He fit one end into the slit and pushed the other end with his thumbs. The fit was snug, as it was supposed to be. "Twenty-five hundred years ago the Dorset Eskimos of northern Labrador used these to catch sea birds. When they were swung around in a crowd of seagulls, each hunter could kill several birds at once." After he finished inserting four stones into four branches, he bunched them two in each hand and rose slowly. "The ends were weighted to fall with just a snap of the wrist. They would get two hits with each snap."

"If the animal does come after me, I want you both to get down the mountainside and into the spotlight," Grand said. "Make as much noise as you can to get Gearhart's attention."

"You don't have to worry about that," the Wall said as he hunkered down beneath his boss, just below the ledge. "If that thing charges they'll hear me down in Santa Barbara."

Grand continued to look out at the creature's eyes. As he did, he held the ends in his hand. With the rocks in his pocket as projectiles, he had the kind of slingshot used in the Maori haka war dance. The native weapon was designed to be used at close range. After stunning the enemy or prey with a blow, the warrior was able to release one end of the slingshot and use it as a whip. The Maori also used it for capturing wild animals to use in religious rites, since the strap could also serve as a muzzle.

Holding the starbursts lightly in his hands, he stepped away from the sinkhole. The animal's dark, liquid eyes moved with him. The scientist sensed that the animal wasn't so much watching him as studying him.

Grand studied the animal back. Apart from the eyes being reminiscent of the paintings, they reminded him of something else. At the moment, he couldn't place what that was.

The creature stayed still, silent, and focused. The breathing or rustling of very large animals like bear and deer could usually be heard. Not this thing. There was vigilance but no hint of unease. It appeared undistracted by the distant buzz of the Bell-412 helicopter and the faraway shouts of the sheriff's team. And it certainly did not seem to fear.

The animal could be a lion as Eugenie had said. Ignoring for the moment how a lion might have gotten loose here, big cats had the capacity to command entire regions with their presence, their stature. But what if the DNA and radiocarbon dating were correct? Could this possibly be a creature that hadn't walked the earth for millennia? And if so, how had it returned? A genetic experiment? There were enough government laboratories in the region to pull off cloning, but DNA restoration on this scale?

And then, in a cascade of what ifs. Grand thought. What if the animal had never left? The Chumash believed in eternal animal spirits. What if this were one of them? Or what if there were a reality behind the lore; a way, a place, a something that had enabled a prehistoric creature to survive to this day? The fact would contradict knowledge but it wouldn't necessarily contradict science. If the animal were here there had to be a reason.

In the primeval setting on the windswept mountaintop, civilization and the new millennium seemed very far away. The groan of soggy, fallen branches underfoot seemed louder than the helicopter hovering over the campsite. The sea air smelled of eternity. And for a flashing moment the feeling that Grand had in his office, of time folding back on itself, was very real again.

Grand stopped several yards from the sinkhole and the eyes stopped with him. It was then that he realized what they reminded him of:

Security cameras.

They were just there in the dark corners of life, taking things in, processing images and data, doing nothing as long as nothing was done. Is that what this creature had done for tens of thousands of years?

From where he stood the trees were pale, tapered columns, like the entrance to an ancient temple. In his imagination the angled, upper branches formed sloping cornices while the twigs and leaves described a chaotic frieze. The ground mist was the smoke of sacrificial braziers, with wisps from censers hanging in the higher branches.

Having gone about ten feet from the sinkhole, Grand began moving forward just to see what the animal would do. The wind picked up as Grand walked toward the oaks. Its lively howl and the shuddering leaves smothered the noise of the helicopter entirely. The sounds and motion made Grand feel isolated even from his two companions. Yet never once, in all his years of exploring mountains and caves, had the scientist felt so much a part of a place. He was connected to the ground, the air, the heavens. Grand wondered if this was what Joseph Tumamait's vision had been like. Not a mystical coagulation of smoke and light but something very real and surprisingly personal.

The eyes continued to watch him. The moonlight filtering through the leaves picked out hints of a massive shape in the blackness. There were the lines of huge shoulders and hindquarters. But the animal was still mostly in shadow, impossible to define.

Grand stopped again, approximately fifty feet from the woods. The wind was whistling here, split by the trees. But beneath that sound he heard a rumble, like a low, steady drumroll. It took him a moment to identify it as the creature's deep breathing.

Then Grand stopped. He listened and turned very slowly toward the left.

And made a disturbing discovery.