Dance crawled until he passed out. He couldn’t say how long he slept, but he was brought back to consciousness by the peaceful sound of his horse cropping grass close to his head.

At this he spasmed in fear, rolled onto his back and crab-walked backwards, scrambling for his pistol. His horse looked at him evenly, knowing him for the fool that he was. When Dance realized his situation, he replaced his half–unholstered pistol and said a prayer of gratitude. Then he started looking for his hat.

He saw it a few hundred yards out on the prairie next to a burned black circle. He raised his eyes to the horizon and saw the black tower stabbing into the sky. He shook his head and said, “I never did like that hat, anyway.” Then he caught his horse and rode back to town.

With Archie in the lead McAllister and ten of the Teamsters crossed the street and made for the Morning Star mine. But before they could get to the mine yard, Jane Siskin stormed into their path. Gone was the dress of the night before and now she was in dusty leathers again. She planted her hands on her hips and said, “Now just where in the hell do you think you're going!?!”

Archie said, “And just whom in the hell you imagine you are addressing?"

"Oh, I ain't talking to you, your highness. These boys in on my payroll and that means they should have the courtesy to inform me before they go off getting in some foolishness. I mean, Clod there don't know no better, but I expected more from you MacAllister."

"Enough wi’ your haverin’ woman! My head’s not havin’ ’t this mornin. It’s bright and loud already and your man here is invited us to go for a walk in a nice, cool, quiet cave. So we've decided on a wee stroll."

Jane turned her skeptical eye towards Archie.

Archie told her of the disappearance of the silver deposits and their replacement with an ancient temple of unknown origin. Jane tried to look tough and unfeeling as he explained, but the memory of the darkness and the vision he had seen there were so fresh in Archie's mind she was captured by his retelling.

"Besides," concluded Archie, “since the road to Bisbee, and for all we know the entirely of the outside world, is gone, it appears you are out of the freight business and must seek a new line of employment. Might I suggest Archaeology?”

"Oh my sweet prince," at Jane with a smile. “It's you who don't get how the world works. Roads and towns come and go, but there is always – always – something that needs hauling. But let's have a look at what's in your root cellar. Then she hooked her arm through his and Archie escorted her across the street as if she had been a guest at the season’s finest ball.

As they assembled torches in the yard, Archie looked askance at the miners who stood around in small groups, muttering to themselves, “Bloody fools.”

“Why are you so angry at them,” Jane asked, “they're just afraid.”

“Superstition offends me. Right to my very core."

"You mean to tell me you don't believe in ghosts and spirits?" Asked Jane.

"Certainly not. I am a natural philosopher. I believe in what I can see with my own eyes, what I can verify with my own senses."

“What of God, ye English heathen? Have you seen him?” Asked McAllister good-naturedly as he tied a rag around a length of shattered board.

“Carefully recording the wonder of his creation so that we can better understand it, is that not worship?” asked Archie.

MacAllister smiled and answered, “Laddie, I’m just grateful when I walk in a church that the roof doesn’t fall in on top of me.

They filled a wagon with torches and rolled it as far as the mine tracks would go, then they all lit two torches a piece and advanced into the chamber. The twelve of them spread out in an attempt to fill the chamber with light. But there was something about the darkness. It retreated, but begrudgingly, stubbornly, as if still fighting to clock the secrets of the ancient Temple.

Jane asked, "then what was that nasty ol’ DuMont digging up this whole time?"

Archie said, "the Miners assure me that there was silver here yesterday.”

Jayne said, “Just like the river."

McAllister said, “I’ll take a clean river over a foul pit any day."

Archie walked along the edge of the room where a great arch opened onto nothing but dark, natural stone. "The curvature of this vault is quite sophisticated, and the interlocking arches would be quite unnecessary if this was merely an underground structure. Which is to say…" Archie trailed off in thought.

McAllister chimed in, “Which is to say nothing makes sense to me."

Archie outlined what parts of the arch she could reach with his torch and asked, “Doesn't this seem more like a window to you?"

“Aye, but it’s daft to build a window underground.”

“But it’s not quite underground, is it? Or at least it might not have been when it was built. If we dig away the rock here, this would be open to the sky. We have merely gone into the hill without descending appreciably.”

Jane said, “Darling, I love the way your brain is always working, but I don't see why it matters. There ain't no silver here, ain't nothing of value. Just a room we're savages used to kill other savages."

"Oh no," at Archie, “Here there is the most valuable commodity of all. Knowledge. And the entertainment of a true mystery. And if your only concern is avarice then what I am saying is that this structure must assuredly have lower levels."

"And we’ve a s**t–ton of useless miners out there," said MacAllister.

"Exactly, now let me see if I can catch a glimpse of the ceiling." Archie strode over to the center of the room and, with a shudder, stepped up on the sacrificial altar. He lifted the torch as high as he could above his head. At first, he thought the darkness was stubbornly congealed above him, like some strange pool of evil night, but as he moved the torch and looked at the shape of the darkness from different angles, he began to see that there was a large mass hanging in the center of the room.

“Scaffold, ladders, something to stand on!” cried Archie.

Two wooden ladders were brought and lashed together at the top and tethered by rope at the sides. Teamsters held the feet of the ladder on either side of the altar. Torch in his right hand, Archie ascended the shaky, makeshift ladder, white-knuckling the rungs with his left.

Perversely, the shape seemed to recede into the darkness above. And Archie felt queasy. He had the feeling that the scale and geometry of this space were wrong, somehow becoming larger the more he advanced into it.

“What is it?” cried Jane from below.

Weakness washed over Archie and he swayed on the ladder, nearly losing his grip. He pulled himself close to the rungs, and ground his teeth together, forcing his breath through his nose.

Without looking up, he climbed the last three rungs and lifted the torch again. The shape was bigger now, and he could almost make it out — almost understand the meaning of its silhouette. If only he could get closer. He stepped even higher on the ladder and now his hips and center of gravity were above the top of the improvised a-frame. His bent knees shook with fear, but he forced himself to stand, holding the torch as high as he could above his head.

It started to make sense. There were two long triangles on the bottom, black and covered with tendrils of mold — or was they fur? it was difficult to know because the blackness of this thing swallow the light. He swung a leg over the top of the ladder and put his foot on the topmost rung on the other side.

“Be careful!” cried Jane.

“I’ve almost made it out…” said Archie as he stood on the wobbling ladder, raising his torch as high as possible into the darkness. The flames from the torch licked one of the corners of the triangles, and there was a sizzling noise, then aroar as the thing caught fire.

Flamed rippled up the side of it, and, with a creaking noise, the thing turned its face at Archie and screamed. By the light of his torch and the light of the creature’s own immolation, Archie made out that the thing hanging in the center of the vault was a gigantic bat.

It let go of its perch and spread its burning wings, crashing into Archie, shattering the ladder, and sending all of it crashing to the stone below.

The Preacher had done a brisk trade all day. Townspeople were flat rattled by the appearance of a river from nothing, then the attack, and the disappearance of the outside world. By now reports had come in of a line surrounding the town beyond which the terrain was different. What was the meaning of this? Was this God’s work or the Devil’s? The End of Days or an unfathomable beginning?

In ones and twos they had trickled into his small church all day and by the late afternoon his conversation had turned into an impromptu sermon. The Preacher had never had an experience like this before and can only attribute the words that flowed forth from him as inspired by the Holy Spirit itself. Where there was fear, he sowed hope. Where there was doubt, he sowed faith.

"Even the Devil is doing the work of the Lord," he began. "For what can exist without it serving God? That's a hard truth to accept sometimes — may be hard to accept all the time. But God gives us troubles so we can grow. It's might be the end of the world but it’s not the end of God’s plan for you. And you don’t want the end of days to catch you and you be unsaved. ‘Cause you want to be in that number, Lord, when the Saints come a marchin’ in!”

“What do you think is going to happen to us?” asked a young woman whose brazen clothing contrasted with her timid manner. A young Magdalene thought the Preacher, cowed by the majesty of a simple chapel.

“in this life? Trial, p...

Nowhere Ch. 18 - Up in Flames

Powered by Wave AI