The thrashing of the river was omnipresent, a noise that washed the canyon clean, amplified by the rock walls in front of and behind me. But there was another noise underlying the sound of the Wind, rock against rock where the animals of the night danced out their nocturnal appetites, some lucky enough to survive till daylight and some not.
I was walking the hundred yards in the open between the first and middle tunnel but about halfway became aware of a set of footfalls coming from the tunnel behind me and another coming from the one ahead.
I stopped, standing there in the clear spring air, with the glittering stars peering down on me, and laughed as I tucked the file and flashlight under my arm and thought about a grown man being haunted by his own footsteps echoing from two tunnels. I stood there listening and finally heard a noise to my left, where, as my eyes adjusted, I could see a great horned owl sitting in a stunted and still-leafless cottonwood that was attempting to grow in a fissure of the granite hillside.
“You getting scary in your old age, too?”
His head turned, and he looked at me with those radiant gold eyes as I listened to my words rebound a couple of times and laughed a response. “Well, I guess I am.”
It was a cold night, and I flipped the collar up on my old horsehide jacket, slipped on my shooting gloves, and started off again, listening to the trio of six cowboy boots in cadence.
I stopped at the granite wall where Womack had most certainly died if he hadn’t already been dead on impact. The stone wall traveled up like a keep, the first fourteen feet painted white, the rest stretching to a cold and forbidding darkness that extended into forever.
I took a deep breath and then billowed the vapor from my lungs like a locomotive gathering steam and pushed off again. The second tunnel was shorter, and a sudden bit of starlight glistened on the macadam roadway on the other side of the darkness. I picked up my pace, figuring I didn’t have much time to get back to the entrance of the first tunnel before Rosey picked me up and we rendezvoused with the Cheyenne Nation to listen for the radio call.
I thought about what I was going to say when it didn’t happen again. Henry and I, like Captain Thomas, had lives and couldn’t spend our nights sitting in patrol cars waiting for phantom calls that never came. Wayman was going to have to talk with someone, someone who understood the things she was going through, and not just a couple of hard rollers like Henry and me.
I sounded tough, especially for a guy who had had his own run-ins with unexplainable phenomena, but I had rationalized all those things to myself and they didn’t bother me near as much as they used to. Nonetheless, I raised my hand and fingered the large silver ring that I wore around my neck on a chain, the one with the turquoise and coral wolves forever chasing each other.
I approached the last tunnel and noticed the curbs on this one were painted yellow, different from the others, and wondered if they had run out of paint. Still listening to my boots echoing off the rock amplifiers in front of and behind me, it was almost as if I could hear a slight disparity in the rhythm, probably because of the difference in distance between the tunnels.
As an experiment, I stopped suddenly, and only a few footfalls echoed after me. Satisfied, I took up walking again and entered the third tunnel. I stopped in the middle, thinking that I should really turn around and get going. It was about then that I heard them again, just within earshot, footsteps my exact tempo—and I hadn’t moved.
“Hello?” My voice bounced back at me, a query mocking my imagination.
There was no answer, but the footfalls receded as I turned and began running back in the direction I’d come. With the pounding of my boots on the roadway, I couldn’t hear the footsteps any longer, but I didn’t need to. I’d heard them for certain this time and was bound to at least catch a glimpse of whoever else was there with me.
Winded, I stopped in the middle of the second tunnel and looked around. I couldn’t see anyone but could still hear someone else, running as I had been.
“Hello?” There was only the echo of my voice bouncing about from all sides as I lurched forward, yanking out the Maglite again and flashing it into the last of the tunnels just ahead—back to go.
It seemed as if there were something crouched down in the middle of the road, but I couldn’t be sure. Picking up speed, I got closer and pulled my sidearm, causing the Womack file folder to fall out and scatter onto the roadway, the slight breeze pushing the sheets of paper like long-dead leaves.