Ancient Eyes Part 2

The moon's radiance was dying away, and he knew that before long dawn would kiss the skyline. Something was in the air. The dreams had left him alone for more than a year, and they had been fading in intensity even before that. The longer he spent away from the mountain, the less real it all became, and the less his past invaded his sleep and his life. Until this last dream he had hoped they would disappear entirely.

Somehow this nightmare was different. The dreams had never been so real or powerful in the past. He still saw those eyes, and if he stared too long at the vast expanse of white sand on the beach below, he saw the opaque lens and the dark things moving beyond it.

He grabbed the leather thong that hung around his neck and drew out the medallion he'd worn since childhood. Staring at it in the dim light, it caught a wink from the moon and glistened in his hand. The dark lines of the equal-armed cross ran like liquid ebony around and through the design. The same design he'd cut into his hand in the dream. The skin of his palm ached as he thought of it, and he clasped the pendant tightly, feeling it press exactly where its phantom twin had been carved. He almost expected to feel the drip of fresh blood.

Light footsteps sounded in the hall. He didn't turn, but moments later, Kat was there, her hands light on his shoulders. He saw her reflected in the window, slender with long legs, long dark hair and dark brown eyes that showed up black in her reflection. She wore only a long t-shirt and he reached back to stroke her thigh, running his palm up a little way beneath the soft cotton to give her a gentle squeeze.

"What's wrong?" she asked softly.

"Nothing," he replied, not sure if he was lying. "I had a bad dream, is all. I couldn't sleep, and I didn't want to wake you, so I came out to watch the waves for a while."

The red hint of dawn licked at the edges of the horizon. Katrina leaned close and kissed his neck, letting her hair fall over his shoulder and tickle his cheek.

"What was the dream?" she asked.

Abraham stared out over the ocean, thinking. "It was an old nightmare," he said at last. "One I thought I'd left far behind me. I'd rather not talk about it now, but I'll tell you."

"No secrets," she said.

The words had the ring of a mantra, a statement that she only half-believed, and Abraham felt a pang of guilt. Katrina had come to him fresh from bad years, and it wasn't always easy for her to believe how much she meant to him.

"No secrets," he agreed. "I promised that long ago. I'll tell you, I'm just not quite ready to revisit it. I guess I'm afraid if I start talking about the bad memories and thinking about them that this won't be the last of the nightmares. I don't know if I'm ready to wake that dragon all the way."

She kissed him again, satisfied, and turned toward the kitchen.

"I'll make coffee."

He glanced down at the beach, but the rising sun had banished all hint of symbols and shadows, and suddenly the nightmare, and the fear it had brought seemed almost silly. He rose decisively.

"I'm going to go down for a run," he called over his shoulder.

He changed into shorts and an old battered t-shirt and stretched carefully, loosening the muscles and tendons in his legs. Kat came back into the room with a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. She sipped and watched him quietly. "Careful," she said somberly. "Don't tear anything important." Abraham grinned, rose to his feet, kissed her on the cheek, and slipped out the door.

The morning sun was just starting to tease heat from the sand in soft waves, and the morning breeze was cool, blowing in off the waves. Abraham started off slowly down the access path to the beach. He would keep the slower pace for the first half mile or so, then, when he was loose and on the open sand, he'd push it for a couple of miles and then turn back.

The beach never lost its magic for him. In all the years of his childhood, the times he remembered best were the few trips down from the mountain with his father, seeing the ocean for the first time and feeling the tug at his heart as waves crashed up over huge damp stones and lapped at the endless sand of the beach. Now it was all so much a part of him that the idea of living isolated on a mountain seemed alien and surreal.

By the time he hit the damp, hard packed sand near the water and turned up the beach, all thoughts of white stone faces and b.l.o.o.d.y symbols had faded to the haze in the back of his mind.

Katrina heard the familiar chug of the small mail truck drawing up to the end of their drive, and she stepped onto the porch with a smile. She shaded her eyes against the sun and saw the young woman who delivered their mail wave as she ducked back into her truck and headed down the feeder road, hitting each cottage in its turn and winding back out toward the coast road back into San Valencez. Katrina left her coffee on the small wicker table on the porch and walked lazily out to the mailbox.

She knew Abe was expecting several payments. His work as a photographer, and the articles he wrote for outdoor and travel magazines brought in a steady, if erratic income.

The sand was warm, and the paving stones that formed their walk were just plain hot. Kat danced to the side and felt the warmth of the sand press up between her toes. She loved this place. The solitude, the ocean, and Abraham had begun to return to her what ten years of abusive marriage had all but beaten out. Even the simplicity of sensation provided by walking barefoot in the sand helped to magnify the pleasure of it.

Her own background was in counseling, and from the isolation of the beach house, and the warmth of Abraham's love, she often looked back over the years in stupefied horror. How could she have gone on helping others, or thinking that she was helping others, when every part of her own mind, body and soul had been so broken and scarred?

She opened the old metal mailbox, smiling at the large happy face Abe had painted on the side. She was tempted, as always, to take a pen and draw in a bullet hole, but she satisfied herself with pulling out a small pile of envelopes and shaking her head.

She walked back toward the house, shuffling through the mail slowly. There were two that were obviously either requests for articles, or payments. There was one from the lady in New Jersey that Abe continued to stubbornly refer to as his "agent," though the woman had done nothing for his career, as far as Katrina could see, except to provide him with rejections for the one novel he'd written more quickly than he'd been able to collect them without her.

The last envelope was small, dingy, and yellow. The printing was neat and bold, and there was no return address. She stopped to examine it, and a sudden gust of wind kicked sand up in a quick swirl around her ankles. Her hair lifted, tickling her arm and shoulder, but she paid no attention. Something about the envelope filled her with an apprehension she couldn't explain, and she was tempted to take it back to the mailbox, or to chase down the mail truck and slip it into a crack in the back where it could be lost. The envelope was sealed with wax-something she'd not seen more than once or twice in her life, and the wax bore an odd symbol.

She was still standing hesitantly at the end of the walk when Abe's voice cut cheerfully through the morning air.

"What's that you've got, pretty lady?" he asked, stopping a few feet away and leaning on the porch rail in mock fatigue.

Katrina glanced up, knowing she looked like a child with her hand caught in a candy jar. That knowledge only served to magnify her sudden embarra.s.sment, and the nagging fear brought on by the envelope in her hand. She started to hide it from him, caught herself, and stared down at her hand. What was wrong with her?

"Just the mail," she said at last. Her voice sounded very small and quiet in the odd moment of silence.

Abe was at her side in seconds. He took the papers from her hand without even glancing at them and tossed them over the porch rail onto the wicker table.

"What's wrong?" he asked. When she didn't answer, he tilted her chin up so that she was forced to meet his eyes and repeated the question softly.

"Nothing," she said. "I don't know. Nothing. There's a letter..." she waved at where he'd tossed the mail, and Abe glanced over at it as if seeing it for the first time.

She fell into his arms and laid her head on his shoulder, where he couldn't see her eyes.

Abe held her for a while, letting the sun bake them both. She smelled his sweat and felt the strength of his arms and the sudden fear melted away. Finally she squirmed free.

Abe stepped onto the porch without a word and flipped through the mail. As usual, he tossed the payments aside first, unopened. He held the other two in his hand. Any other day, whatever else had arrived would take a back seat to the ever-important correspondence from New Jersey, but the sight of the small, yellowed envelope and its odd seal had brought him up short. Very gently, he placed the letter from his agent on the table and then stood silently and stared at the yellow envelope with a frown creasing his brow.

When he glanced up he saw that she'd been holding her breath and watching him watch the envelope. Abe shook his head and stepped back off the porch and into the light.

"What is it?" she asked.

He started to answer, stopped, glanced down at the envelope again, and then shook his head. "I don't know. It's from back home, but there's something ..."

He seemed unable to finish the thought, so she did it for him. "Wrong. There's something wrong with it, Abe. I felt it too." He shook his head again, almost angrily, and yanked the flap of the envelope open. He drew out a small piece of paper and read it quickly. His face flushed, and his hand trembled. Kat saw that there was something large and dark at the bottom of the note, but she couldn't make out the words.

"What is it?" she repeated.

At first she thought he wouldn't tell her. He gripped the note so tightly his knuckles went white, and his arm shook. Then he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and simply held the note out to her.

She hesitated, but only for a second. Stepping forward, she slipped the paper out of his hand and read quickly. It was written in neat, simple script. Very short.

"He's back, boy. Come home."

There was no signature. At the bottom of the page was a hideous black squiggle, surrounded by the solid lines of an equal-armed cross. Katrina gasped, stepped forward, and before Abe could pull back, she gripped the leather thong around his neck and slid the medallion from beneath his shirt. It glistened in the sunlight, wet with perspiration and warm to the touch.

Kat held the paper alongside it. The design was the same without the dark swirling mark beneath. She twisted her hand into the thong and pulled it tight, nearly choking him.

"What is it?" she asked. Her voice was tight now, fierce.

Abe gently broke free and tugged her hand from the medallion. He held her hand and then stared off over her shoulder for what seemed an eternity, gazing toward the mountains in the east. Then he spoke softly.

"It's from my mother," he said. "It's the first thing I've heard from her since I left the mountain."

Kat shivered. She wasn't sure if it was still the letter working its odd, discomforting spell, or the way he'd said "the mountain," making it somehow a place much further away than the miles she knew it to be. Worlds and centuries distant.

"Who is back?" she asked. "What does it mean?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he said. He took the paper from her hand and crumpled it with such sudden violence that Kat stepped back and cried out. He didn't glance up at her, but continued to stare at the paper twisted on the ground and catching in the same breeze that had blown the sand around Kat's ankles earlier. It slapped against the leg of his jeans and held.

He trembled, but did not move, and Kat saw a single tear squeeze free of the corner of his eye, sliding down his cheek and blending with the sweat from his run in the morning sun.

"It doesn't matter," he repeated. "I'll never go back."

The paper slipped free of his pants at last and skittered off toward the beach. They watched it go in silence, and then he put his arm around her back, grabbed the rest of the mail, and led her back inside. The sun had given way to clouds, and it looked like there would be a short squall before noon. By the time they had closed the door behind them, the note was rolling down the beach, lost in clouds of sand and soaked in the first heavy drops of rain.

SIX.

The dream took Abraham the moment he was asleep. He soared far above the land and watched his shadow ripple across the ground beneath him, cast by the silver luminescence of the moon. Cold wind rippled through his hair and his clothing flapped about his arms and legs wildly. It was more sensation than he was accustomed to in a dream, but he lost little thought on this oddity.

He saw the mountain ahead and banked against the backdrop of clouds. On one level he knew it was a dream, a familiar dream, the freedom of flight against a backdrop of darkness that threatened to enfold him at any moment and deny any return to the ground, or to the light. He was certain that Freud or any number of modern philosophers and psychologists would have a field day with the symbols.

Lights flickered on the mountain's side, and he was no longer himself, but had taken on the form of a great bird. He swooped in low and came to rest in the branches of a tall oak. Below, the white church stood. Its windows were ablaze with light. Smoke curled from the chimney and dark shadows moved about inside. He heard sounds from within, but they made no sense to him.

The image of the great stone face from his previous dream returned to him and he c.o.c.ked his head, concentrating. The surface of the church rippled oddly and faded to translucence. Within its walls he saw long trailing roots and strong ropes of vine binding the wood, running through its core like the veins through the flesh of some great corporeal being, seeking the earth and stone beneath.

The entire structure was woven into a menacing, writhing ma.s.s that concentrated just above the main entrance.

As he sat, perched easily on a high branch and hidden in shadows, the universe shifted. The motion and turmoil below ceased, then refocused and bent its will toward him. The structure shuddered under the sudden shift, and the mountain itself rolled to the side, like the shrug of huge shoulders.

Abraham backed along the limb toward the trunk of the tree and shivered with sudden apprehension. He did not want those dark eyes to find him again, not here, and not as he hid in the branches and sneaked about like a spy.

With a frantic whirl he leapt from the branch, flapped his wings, and turned around the far side of the tree to keep it between him and the church. He heard something cry out, and he flapped harder, and then harder still. His muscles strained with the effort.

Then the sound below him shifted tone and timber and became a great bell, ringing over and over, and something gripped him by his shoulders, talons taking him from above. He cried out sharply, and woke with a start, bathed in sweat.

The phone was ringing. He heard a voice calling his name. Hands gripped his shoulders and before he could control it, he gripped the wrists tightly. His mind cleared fully when he heard Katrina gasp in pain and realized it was her voice that he heard. The phone was still ringing.

"You're hurting me, Abe," Katrina jerked backward, and he released her. She pulled back and away to her own side of the bed. The lamp on her side was lit, and as he sat up slowly, leaned on the headboard and shaded his eyes from the light he saw her reach for the phone.

Something clutched at his heart and he lunged. She saw the motion, and, obviously spooked, skittered off her side of the bed and away. Abe grabbed the phone off its hook, ignored her, and spoke with a shaky voice.

"h.e.l.lo?" Only static replied. "Who is it?" Katrina asked. Her voice shook. "Who is this?" Abe asked. There was no reply. Moments later there was a loud click, and the line went dead. As the dial tone cut back in, Abe hung the phone up and laid his face on the sheets, dazed. Then, very slowly, he released the breath he hadn't even been aware he was holding and rolled to his back. He covered his eyes with one arm. For the second night in a row he'd awakened bathed in sweat, and this time the dream wouldn't let go. He couldn't shake the sensation of flight. The images of the dream remained as vivid as if they were memories, and he didn't even try to speak until he heard soft footsteps and felt the bed shift slightly.

Katrina touched his arm tentatively, and he pulled it slowly from his eyes and met her gaze.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I had a nightmare," he answered. "It was worse than before, and not like anything I've ever experienced."

"Who was on the phone?" she asked, still not getting too close to him.

"I have no idea," he sighed. "Whoever it was didn't say a thing. It was probably just a wrong number, but I guess it freaked me out after waking up like that. I mean, who would call us at this hour?"

He saw from the way she watched him that she only half believed him. Abraham raised himself slowly, fluffed his pillow behind his back and held out his arms to her. She watched him for a moment, and then slid onto the bed and into his arms. Once they made contact, she was suddenly pressed tightly to his side, and he curled her into a tight embrace. Her hair tickled his nose and chin, and he buried his face in it. They stayed that way a long time, then, very suddenly, she pulled back-not out of his embrace, but far enough to pound her fist hard on his chest. She hit him again and was rearing back for a third shot when he grabbed her wrist and stopped her.

"You promised," she said. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e, and he knew she was fighting back tears. "You promised you would never keep secrets from me, but you are. These dreams-that letter that came today-the phone call. You know what all of it is about."

She wasn't asking, and Abe knew better than to try and slip past her guard. He nodded slowly.

"I'm not sure where to start," he said. "I've never talked to anyone about any of this, and I thought I'd left it all far enough behind me that I'd never have to. It isn't that I was keeping secrets, Kat," he stroked her hair and pulled her close again, though she was a little stiffer in his arms, particularly at this last. He continued as if he hadn't noticed, determined to get through it now that he'd started. "It's that I hoped it would just go away, like the bad dreams. And it did, even the dreams were gone, but now they're back."

Abe reached down and lifted the leather thong with its dangling, equal-armed cross pendant. He fingered it absently, and feeling the motion, Katrina glanced up and watched him.

"Your father gave you that," she said.

Abe nodded. "This and a lot of other things, including some that I didn't want. He gave me the dreams, and unless I'm wrong about all of this, it's because of him that it's all come back to haunt me now."

"But," Kat lifted her head from his chest and stared at him, "you told me your father was dead."

"He is," Abe nodded, still fingering the medallion. "He died before I left the mountain. My mother is still there." He hesitated, still staring at the medallion and turning it over and over in his hands. "I wasn't sure of that until I got the letter."

He held the small cross still, its rough, hand-molded contours catching the light from the bedside lamp and glittering softly. Abe turned to face Kat.

"My father wore this until the day he died. My mother gave it to me after his funeral. She told me he wanted me to have it-that I needed it, but she didn't tell me why. Not then. In fact, she didn't tell me until just before I left the mountain for good."

"You shouldn't have to have a reason for owning something of your father's," she chided him softly.

"I have other things of my father's," Abe replied. "This isn't a gift, it's an anchor. It's like wearing a big psychic weight around my neck, and every time I turn in any direction but toward that mountain, I feel it drawing me back. I've taken it off dozens of times. I even had it in an envelope once, ready to mail it to her and forget about it forever, but something always happened to distract me, or to change my mind. In the early days, holding this and praying was the only way I could escape the dreams."

"You've never been back?" she asked. "You haven't called and talked to your mother?"

"There are only about half a dozen phones on the entire mountain," he laughed. "My mother would have no way to get the message, unless she went down to Greene's Store and paid to use his phone. If she'd done that, the old buzzard would have hovered over her shoulder and listened in on every word.

"Things are different up there. If you drive up to Friendly, it's pretty rustic, but if you take the fork past Greene's, you hit a long stretch of nothing, and shortly after that you'd be hard pressed to prove to yourself you weren't in another universe."

"But," Katrina frowned, trying to picture it, "how do they live? What do they do?"

"The same things folks on that mountain have done since the Spaniards first came to California and people started to settle. Some of them farm; there are grapes on the side of the mountain. Others raise goats and livestock, pigs, chickens-some do sewing, hunt and fish. You'd be surprised what you can get by on once you get yourself out away from the cities and the rules of modern society. They get an occasional sheriff up there, and now and then a Highway Patrol car braves the potholes in the road, but for the most part the people on that mountain might as well not exist to the world down here. I suppose that will change one day."

He stared off into the shadows for a moment, thinking. His fingers continued to work over the surface of the coin, tracing the patterns again and again. Then he snapped back to the moment.

"Then again," he said, "maybe not. There are things about that mountain that defy description. There are stories I have never told anyone because when I tell them to myself, they sound ridiculous and surreal. I have memories that I could be convinced were nothing but delusions, or dreams. At least, you could have convinced me a few days ago."

Katrina stared at him, waiting for more. He saw the confusion in her eyes and closed his own, trying to settle the memories, and the roiling ma.s.s of questions that had surfaced over the past two days, into something he could tell her that would make sense.

"There were two churches on the mountain when I was a boy," he said at last. "One was my father's. It was the highest thing on the mountain that I ever saw, except one. There were peaks that reached further, but I never climbed them, and I don't believe anyone I knew ever did either. The church was like a boundary, cutting us off on the upper reaches. The other church was lower, the furthest thing down toward the back road out of that part of the hills. I came out past it when I left."