Copperseed stood at a comfortable distance, unmasked, hands in his uniform pockets.
“The first dwellers,” he seemingly quoted.
Kerri looked up at him, hand shielding her eyes from the sun. The deputy spoke as if he read off a prompter in the clouds.
“Back in the days of the Second Sky Battle, when the Walla Walla first settled on the smoking hills, they discovered an elusive people lurking in the misty slopes and the shadowy gorges near the source of the Zoinx River. These folk shunned the sun and the moon, lived only near the water or in it, inside caves where underground rivers flow, and they worshipped Thtaggoa, the undergod in the Mount of Thunder. The Walla Walla knew better than to disturb the first dwellers, for those who ventured too far upriver fell mad with horror at the sight of the brutal, disfigured beings, and those who dared to camp in the deeper valleys were killed and their bodies hanged from trees as a warning to others. For many years the Walla Walla respected their boundaries and never neared the Mount of Thunder or entered the valleys below. But then Thtaggoa grew hungry for power, and the earth rumbled, and the mist from the lake spread, killing the forests and the animals, drowning the villages. And under cover of the mist, the first dwellers marched forth, slaughtering our people. The Walla Walla fought bravely with spears and shields, but the first dwellers were resilient and their numbers never dwindled. Thus, as the undergod in the Mount of Thunder roared, the Walla Walla gathered their clans and sang together, asking the Fathers for help. And in response, from the Warm Snows was sent down a powerful shaman named Ashen Fox. And Ashen Fox walked to the foot of the Mount of Thunder with four brave warriors, and there in a circle of fire he chanted the incantation, and the mount collapsed, and Thtaggoa and its spawn were cast down the pit, and the river filled the pit with water. But Thtaggoa is immortal and still sleeps at the bottom of the lake, waiting to be released and reign again.”
Pigeons cooed and fluttered away. Kerri took some time to settle back onto the white courtyard under her fingernails, the sun on her cheeks, the flat blue sky above.
“Okay. As far as I can tell,” she began, “you’re retelling the Walla Walla interpretation of the cataclysm that formed Sleepy Lake. What is the time of the Second Sky Battle? Fifteen hundred, two thousand years ago?”
Copperseed shrugged in a way that could pass for agreement.
“Right,” Kerri resumed. “There’s geological evidence that Sleepy Lake is the collapsed caldera of a volcano that blew up around that time. The volcano was your Mount of Thunder. And the Warm Snows from which the shaman came must be the Cascades. The shaman and that Thookatoo thing are likely personifications of natural forces. Probably the first dwellers too.” She paused, allowed the counterargument to catch up. “But then there’s the thing in your morgue.”
She took a minute to highlight her mental notes, then resumed.
“Okay, let’s just say that it is one of these first dwellers, but according to your mythology, the things disappeared. Now this one wasn’t exactly avoiding us. Where have they been hiding until now?”
“They haven’t,” Copperseed refuted. “We’ve been getting reports of footprints and sightings since the fifties.”
“That’s still only forty years; why did no one see them before?”
They locked eyes, and said together, “We weren’t digging mines before.”
“I got there before you, don’t pin on any medals,” she warned. “Do you have a freezer? A kitchen freezer; we don’t need to keep the whole thing. I’ll extract some tissue samples to deep-freeze them; the rest will probably be lost tomorrow, but that and the pictures will be enough to bring scientific attention.” She stood up, breathed in the last chestful of clean air before going back to work. “Whether these are legendary hellspawn or a gross error on nature’s side, they need to be dealt with.”
—
Dunia slid the Polaroid back across the sequoia table.
“Horrifying,” she pronounced, before reading the room. “Are you gonna ask me if I ever saw one of these rummaging our trash cans in Debo?n Mansion?”
“No,” Andy said apologetically. She had not foreseen that Nate would be flashing the picture around. “I mean, you didn’t, did you?”
“No,” Dunia said. “My father would’ve been interested, though. It’s a real pity they didn’t meet.”
“What do you mean?” Nate prompted.
Dunia tapped her cigarette in the vicinity of the ashtray, took another drag, and leaned back in her seat.
“Daniel Debo?n was convinced that mysterious beings hid under the hills,” she said. “Old, forgotten beasts unknown to modern science. He actually looked for them.”
“How do you think he got that idea?”
“His books,” she short-answered. “The family owned a large collection of works by ancient scientists and philosophers—so ancient that most of the knowledge in them is myth. But my father used to think there is always some stratum of fact beneath any legend; that the remote lands described by Persian alchemists and Andalusi theologists were actual regions of this continent, glimpsed or intuited by pre-Columbian explorers. The Debo?ns were fond of ancient wisdom like that.”
“Do you still own those books?” Nate asked.
“No. They might still be in the house, in the attic. That’s where he had his alchemy lab; he practically lived there.”
“Just to clarify,” Andy probed, “when you say ‘alchemy,’ you mean…?”
“Primitive chemistry,” Dunia thesaurusized. “Physics tinted with magic. Science that still considered incantations and the current phase of the moon as part of the equation. Pretty much what any menopausal New Age nut would happily embrace now, but when it’s done by men who also live alone in the woods, it looks weird,” Dunia said, flicking the joke off the tip of her cigarette. “My father was convinced that there was some overlooked, revolutionary knowledge in the arts of the first philosophers. He kept all sorts of chemical products and samples and astronomical charts, and tried to re-create the experiments.”
“Could it have been one of his experiments that caused the fire in nineteen forty-nine?”
“Perhaps.” She shrugged. “But the attic was mostly undamaged, I heard. Police said a freak accident caused the oil tank to blow up, taking the east wing and my father with it. He was buried on the isle, as per his instructions. You may have seen his grave,” she said, acknowledging Andy’s nod.
“There is a rumor,” Nate began, in a way that passed as tactful for somebody accustomed to the bluntness of Arkham patients, “that your father’s father, Damian Debo?n, was a sorcerer.”
“I’ve heard that one. And he was a pirate too.” Dunia smirked. “Oh, and do you know why he set sail in the first place? He was running away after his witch mother was trialed and burned in Salem.”
“Fuck shit goddamn testicles, always fucking Salem,” Nate ranted.