Samuel called him about the Indian ruins: those away from the older, picked-over places. “They’re great, man, untouched. My uncle said they were protected, but if you go at night the security is slack, especially, if you’ve got a bottle to share with the guard.” Samuel was a night orderly where James had done his residency. ‘Crazy Horse’ Sammie was definitely a member of the new-age tribe.
Of course, Patricia would be pissed, another weekend away sifting through the dust of someone else’s past for him, leaving her alone again. “Jesus, Jimmy. I’d like to think you’d prefer spending a weekend with me. I put up with enough of those lonely hours when you were on call.”
Dear, sweet Patricia.
James had met her at a party about six months before completing his Urology residency in Santa Fe. It was a quick attraction for them resulting in his move to her sleek condo within a month. She had no room to complain; they weren’t married, and it was Patricia who had exposed him to Native American artifacts through her art dealership.
And he loved to go on his digs.
After being in business with two other doctors at an up-and-coming medical plaza for almost a year, James had plenty of free time after work and on weekends to indulge in his little pleasure.
Most of the local ruins were within two or three hours drive, but they were picked over and disappointing. That’s why the prospect of a new untouched place was intriguing. He wasn’t sure why Sammie had contacted him, as James hadn’t seen the orderly since leaving the hospital after his residency was completed. But then again, it wasn’t so strange. James and Sammie had spent a lot of slow nights talking about James’s hobby. And Sammie, though he was not too interested himself, had a lot of information from his family about the local ruins and what James might expect to find.
Now the road lay ahead with a full moon to light the way through the New Mexico night, leaving Patricia behind, swirling the ice in her drink as she stared up at the same moon from her patio. Stewing, reassessing the importance and need of her relationship with James and thinking of how her old singles’ bar might fare this weekend.
It took James six hours to get there. It was knocking on the door of 1am when he got out and looked at the line of gray cliffs in the moonlight.
“Oh, by the way, man,” Sammie had told him as almost an afterthought. “They’re cave dwellings. So watch it. It’ll be dark in there. Super dark.”
Before he started the climb, James spied an old pickup parked about fifty yards away from the bottom of the cliffs, next to it a small adobe house revealed a dim light just visible through a side window. The security guard must have been asleep or bombed, James passed by without incident.
The climb was exhilarating. The desert landscape was a surrealistic study of black and white tones in the ribbon of moonlight.
There was a path on the rim of the cliffs that led to a wide-mouthed opening about eight feet high and ten feet wide and inside three caves honeycombing an area that spread out into the body of the cliffs. James checked his utility belt to make sure he had all the gear he needed. There was the usual assortment: small hammers, picks, brushes, and leather pouches.
Nights were cool in the desert and so James had worn his heavy jeans and long-sleeved denim shirt. However, the temperature in the mouth of the central opening took a drastic rise to that outside, causing his clothes to stick and feel clammy. Then he reached the first cave and the darkness was an oppressive inky blackness in a dank pool of air that his flashlight’s high beam struggled to penetrate.
Every primal fear picked at James, urging him to turn back. He might have done so, had he not stumbled on some pottery remains within the first few feet. He bent down to look closer and found some broken clay pieces and what looked like turquoise beads from a necklace or bracelet. He placed a few samples in his pouch.
The first cave ended quickly; he guessed it to be only forty yards or so deep. This turned out to be true of the second cave as well. James did find a few more artifacts in the second, but the items were about the same: cracked pottery pieces, beads, bits of leather strings, and a few arrowheads.
The third cave was another matter.
The heat became exaggerated and James felt the sweat rolling beneath his clothes. He wished he had brought a canteen along, but he had expected it to be cool and to go back to his jeep would consume too much time. He made up his mind that if the artifacts he found in here were similar to the other two caves, he would call it a night and go home.
It was the mummies that changed his mind.
At first he almost dismissed the shadows thrown on the walls of the cave as an aberration, but as he moved closer James discerned what appeared to be bodies stacked on three levels, with each level consisting of two forms. From what he could see in the limited light, they were Indian mummies. The weave of the remaining clothes and ornaments on the bodies suggested it.
The further down James moved, the deeper the cave became.
He bent to examine one of the dried human corpses, but he was startled by what sounded like something moving behind him. James shined his light toward the noise but found nothing save bits of swirling dust. Dismissing it as his imagination, he turned the light on the face of the mummy beside him and gasped as an open eye glittered back at him from the thing’s face.
Moving away from the mummy too quickly, James lost his balance and the flashlight. As he scrambled to retrieve it, he heard a dry laugh echo around him. “Doodlebug, doodlebug,” rasped out, followed by the laugh again.
“Hello,” James said and swallowed back the dust caught in his throat. “Is someone there?”
Swinging the retrieved light rapidly around, James saw no one. Only the silhouettes against the walls shared the cave with him.
Then just next to his right ear: “Doodlebug!”
James screamed and swung the light toward the sound and slipped backward. That’s when the ground sank beneath him.
* * *
“Doodlebug, doodlebug.”
James’s small hand moved the match stick around the edges of the dirt tunnel.
“Remember the rest of it?” His father’s voice was a shadow behind him.
“Doodlebug, doodlebug, come out of your house. Your house is on fire. Doodlebug, doodlebug. ”
He felt the coolness of the garage on a Texas summer afternoon. The garage was more like a big red barn nestled under the pecan trees whose limbs danced lazily in the summer breeze across the tin roof. Inside it, the dirt floor a home for ant lions, its rafters a nesting place for mud-daubers.
“Doodlebug, doodlebug.” Single rays of sunlight beaming through the slits in the sides of the garage as James laughed at the swirling dirt kicked back by an ant lion.
“Come out of your house. Your house is on fire.”
The smell of burning oil and the distant whisper of his father’s voice.
The touch of a hand on James’s shoulder.
“Can you feel that?”
The Texas summer faded as James tried to focus. All was a blur. “A little,” James said. “What happened?”
A hand lifted his head. Something was placed against his lips. “Drink.” Liquid sloshed into James’s mouth. There was a trace of something pungent and James’s throat constricted, but he managed to swallow.
About the time his vision cleared enough for him to see the old man standing above him, James realized he had no feeling in his arms or legs.
The old man must have seen the panic in his patient’s eyes and answered the question before James could ask it. “You had a bad fall. Your back is…well, it’s too early to tell.”
James remembered then, falling through the cave floor, the mummies, the sound. “Yes, something…”
“Shh. Quiet now,” the old one said. “You must rest and be still.”
The light was dim. James could only see in front and above. He could not turn his head. There were oil lamps hanging from the ceiling and the walls.
The room seemed to be nothing more than another cave, a large dirt tunnel under the cliffs above.
Whoever the old man was, he was definitely dressed as an Indian: leather headband, beaded vest with a necklace made of stones and what looked to be the bones of animals. The old face was lined and worn. His nose was broad; his hair braided and gray.
“I am the medicine man, the Shaman,” the old man said as he placed a cool, damp rag on James’s head.
“I am a doctor too,” James said, a little surprised that he should relate kinship to the superstitious methods of a shaman. As James was about to ask if help had been sent for, his throat was seized by a sudden spasm. He strained to speak, but nothing could escape through the bonds of his constricted larynx.
“Good.” The old man smiled warmly. “Now you have the right dose.”
James’s face gave a surprised and questioning response.
“The drink.” An aged hand held up the wooden bowl. White drops of liquid still clung to its edge. “It will make you less active. A mixture of herbs and spider venom. Very effective, but not lethal. We need you alive, of course.”
James’s mind was racing. Was the old man crazy or was he just trying to be sure his patient couldn’t move, avoiding more spinal injury and what did he mean by we?
James felt dread spread along with the paralyzing drug. Sweat rolled down his face. Sweat he could not feel until it flowed into his eyes.
The old man bent to wipe James’s forehead, and as James tried to focus on the ceiling above, he saw what appeared to be shadows elongating there. Then, to his horror, James watched as the shaman held up a clay jar, reached inside, and pulled out a dark creature about the size of an adult leech. James recoiled with what muscle tone remained as the thing was placed on his throat.
What was this old fool doing? Bleeding him?
Before James had time to think about his situation, another of the repulsive creatures was placed on him, then another, and another. While the shaman was busy arranging one after the other on James’s neck and head, he droned on as if he were a teacher explaining a lesson. “The soldiers ran out of bullets. They were exhausted from all the killing, so they left us, but we were old and had nowhere else to go. So we climbed the cliffs and went into the caves.” The shadows were moving around them and James heard a dusty shuffling behind. “Even though we knew they were haunted, we went into them. and he was waiting. Our demon. Our Samuel.”
The old man took the last leech from the jar and placed it just above James’s collarbone, leaving only James’s nostrils and eyes uncovered. The ones that had been put in his mouth squirmed as they filled with blood.
“Since we were old and had bad teeth,” the shaman continued, “the fangs that came after he made us immortal were rotten and chipped. They fell out when we fed and so we learned from our demon about the ‘old cure’, the one his elders had used in their tribe.”
James wished the old man had covered his eyes as well. He couldn’t close them and was forced to watch as the leeches were removed and placed in the gaping mouths. He watch the hollowed eyes glow as leeches were popped and chewed, spewing James’s blood down greedy chins where old crusted tongues darted to catch each drop.
“Too bad we can’t keep you around,” the old man said, chewing and smiling a red smile. “But Samuel hasn’t been to see us in a long while. We thought he had forsaken us…until you dropped in, that is.” The shaman bent to place his mouth on one of the oozing wounds left after a leech had been removed. “And we are so hungry,” he said between sucking gasps. “Just starving. Just starving.”
The yawning mouths descended. James could not scream.
* * *
Patricia grew warm under the spell of scotch.
Too bad the singles’ bar had not been as much fun as she had hoped. Perhaps she looked too attached even without James there. Oh well, at least she was pleasantly drunk.
“May I?”
Patricia turned to face the handsome man who had asked permission to join her.
“Sure,” she said heavily over a numb and rebellious tongue.
This guy looked familiar somehow. God, he was cute. There was something about this young Indian man that got her juices flowing. Dark hair, shoulder length and heavy was shining in the light and his tanned skin seemed to be offering hidden pleasures. He smiled and the white smile seemed to be filled with ancient tribal knowledge.
Who knew, James might not be the only one to unearth an Indian artifact tonight.
“I’m Patricia,” she said and extended her hand.
The man took her hand and pressed his lips lightly against her skin. He gazed at her with a mischievous grin. “Samuel,” he said, “but my friends call me Sammie.”
When she smiled back, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the heated pulse throbbing in her neck.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Pumpkin Seed by Timothy C. Hobbs $4.99 Vamplit Publishing Smashwords Edition
“I am a drinker of human blood and an eater of human flesh, a monster dressed in the skin of a man.” So states Charles, the main character of the novel, after being infected with a virus transmitted by an insect vector.
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