Empire of Dust by Williamson Chet

Author:Williamson, Chet [Williamson, Chet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2012-01-13T03:33:50+00:00

Chapter 23

While the three were sitting in the coffee shop, two hundred miles north of Gallup, the young priests and Father Alexander were climbing into the panel truck that held the leaden casket. The old priest looked back at the forbidding container with apprehension, but when he felt and heard nothing, he relaxed a little.

"Don't worry, Father," Father James reassured him, sensing the older man's concern. "He's snug as a bug in a rug in there. Not going to pop out."

Father Alexander forced a smile and nodded.

"Okay, Father," said Father William, who had slipped behind the wheel. "Which way?"

Father Alexander guided them on a circuitous route among the narrow canyons. In some places there was scarcely room for the vehicle to get through, and once they had to get out and move some fallen rocks out of the way. The sides of the canyon rose like straight walls, so steep and high that the canyon floor was in constant shadow except for those rare occasions when the sun was directly overhead.

Father William looked up at the strip of blue above them as he threw the last rock out of their way. "Do these canyons ever get flooded?" he asked.

"Every now and then," said Father Alexander. "Believe me, if they do, you want to see it from up there." He pointed to the rim high above. "Not as often, though, since they put the dam in. Now, if that would go—well, I imagine the water would be pretty high in here."

They got back into the truck and continued to drive through the narrow slot canyon until it widened out into a flat-bottomed bowl a hundred feet across. Above them the walls of the canyon broadened and then partially came together again over them, as though the priests were at the bottom of a huge bowl.

In the center of this bowl was a circle of fitted stones thirty feet in diameter, and several inches higher than the floor, and near the middle of that circle was a rectangular opening eight feet long and five wide. The top of a wooden ladder stuck out of the dark hole.

A heavy stone slab lay next to the entrance, and a black sheeting that apparently covered the bottom of the slab extended up for several inches on each side of it. A heavy metal ring was attached to the top of the slab. A thick cable ran upward from it to a small metal crane powered by a gasoline engine. Just outside the stone circle, a large wooden cross had been erected. The upright was twenty feet high and the crosspiece ten feet long.

"The kiva," Father William said, as the priests got out of the truck.

"Yes," said Father Alexander. "An Anasazi ceremonial chamber. Probably built sometime between 1000 and 1100. The priest who tended the mission back in the 1880s found it. He had been told about our prisoner by another priest who had been involved in one of the holdings. The kiva struck him as being an ideal place.

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