Death Chants (13 page)

I stuffed the
wallet back into her purse and handed the old man the plastic driver's license. It had her
picture on it, as well as her name. It was an old photo and she looked younger and healthier in
it, almost like a different person.

The old man took
the card, looked at it and nodded that it was what he needed.

Death Catcher stuck
one end of the card in the right-hand corner of the sand painting, filling in the corner block
around it with black sand.

I have never seen a
driver's license used in a sand painting like that before. I wondered if the old man was playing
some kind of joke on them.

But the old man had
much too evil a reputation to be one for jokes.

I watched the sand
painting unfold. I knew it would take a long time until it was finished.

I got up to go. I
had to get rid of some of last night's beer. I went around the side of Two Racer's house and
relieved myself.

When I came out, I
saw my uncle Stormbringer standing down by where Jim Longfeather was sitting. They were talking
and Longfeather was pointing in Death Catcher's direction. I sensed that my uncle was saying
something that would shake the air like a storm.

I walked down to
where they stood because I sensed that something was wrong.

My uncle had a very
strange look on his face, like a man who understands the taste of poison.

"I don't
understand. What are you trying to say?" asked Longfeather, fear in his face and eyes.

My uncle had his
eyes turned away. "I said Death Catcher is not his only name, just the name that is his when the
black winds blow and give him power. When he paints sand paintings, they call him Death
Catcher."

"So what?" said
Longfeather. "So he has more than one name."

My uncle just shook
his head sorrowfully. "My heart walks on the ground for you. You have been too long from the
people or you would know. They call him Death Catcher because he only
does sand paintings for the dead. As a person takes his name out of
the world, on that day, Death Catcher makes a sand painting for them."

"Nobody is dead
here," said Longfeather in confusion.

"He paints them
just before the person dies. In all the years Death Catcher has walked the earth, he has never
made a mis­take. Never. When he sand-paints for someone, that person leaves the world in death,"
said Stormbringer and he was genu­inely sorry when he said it.

Longfeather
screamed. He pushed my uncle aside and bolted toward Death Catcher and the blanket-wrapped figure
of his white girlfriend.

"No!" he shrieked,
and he knocked the old man aside. The old man, frail with many winters in his bones, fell heavily
on his back, a clay pot of corn pollen flying over his shoulder and smashing against a
rock.

Death Catcher lay
flat on his back, not hurt, his eyes closed.

I had run after
Longfeather, hoping I could stop him, but a night of drinking doesn't make for a good runner the
day after. He had me beat by at least ten steps.

He thundered
through the sand painting, scuffing and kicking at the rainbow-colored pattern, scattering it to
all four direc­tions.

It was
desecration.

I jumped on
Longfeather and tried to knock him down, afraid he was going to try to hurt the old man. He
bobbed his head and threw me off his back like a duck shaking off water.

I landed in the
wreckage of the sand painting.

Longfeather ran to
the girl. The figure beneath the blanket did not move.

He picked her up
gently and I heard him say something to her but she was strangely silent.

I sat up slowly,
stiffly. I had come down pretty hard and my neck hurt bad. It ached when I tried to turn it. I
wanted to move over to the old man, to see if he was hurt. But my uncle was already there,
helping the old man sit up.

As I struggled to
get up, my hand closed on something hard and I looked down and saw the girl's plastic driver's
license stuck
in the black corner of the
sand painting. It was the only part of the sand painting that had escaped destruction.

I picked it up and
started to look at it.

The old man opened
his mouth and laughed. It was a harsh sound, cold and evil, and it chilled my bones.

I turned to look at
the old man.

His eyes shone in
triumph, reminding me of the dead, black eyes of a vulture.

I wondered if the
girl was all right. I looked down at the driver's license and knew suddenly how she
was.

Her name was gone.
The old picture of her, taken when she was younger and healthier, was now that of a Navaho
blanket-wrapped skeleton, painted on the wind by the Death Catcher.

The shaman sat on
the hard dirt floor of the ruined pueblo waiting for the rat of death.

The wound in his
side was fire and ice. Fire that burned his flesh with the pain of it and ice that crept toward
his heart as the blood oozed from the wound.

The soft keening of
his death chant awoke the ancient rat.

Yasheya lay back
against the crumbling wall, the strength of his days like sand washing away in a storm-burdened
stream.

"Hola! Friend rat,
picker of bones!" he cried, his eyes staring into the dark.

The rat, the long
swift gray thing that stirred in the ancient walls, lifted its head, harkening to the old man's
invocation.

Yasheya dipped a
finger in the pool of blood at his feet. He held it up to his lips and blew gently on it, as if
sending the red-blood rich scent of it through the ruins.

"Smell it,
bonepicker. Arise and come to me. An invitation to a feast."

The rat arose from
the gray dust and broken bones of its centuries-old nest. Its eyes burned in the dark with the
power of old forgotten dreams, with the dark force of a thousand thou­sand moonless
nights.

It moved quickly
now, the old hunger and lust burning its blood. The rat came swiftly down the long tunnel, its
dry claws rasping against the hard dirt floor.

The blood dripped
down Yasheya's arm. The hand that held the wound trembled as if each step of the rat shook the
floor like a time of thunder moving earth.

"I hear you,
ancient enemy. Are your teeth still sharp and
wicked? Are your claws strong enough to tear my wind-and-age-hardened old flesh? I wish
to see you, bone stripper! I call your name!"

As the rat passed
down through the burial rooms, it tarried at the entrance to each grave as if tasting in memory
the feast it had once had.

Yasheya gathered
his failing strengths and final magics for the last battle.

The ancient face of
rat enemy rose out of the dust at his feet.

Yasheya smiled and
a spider crawled out of his mouth, a gray thing of ash and silken intent, a spider from the
burning days, alive with ancient hatred.

Wary, the rat being
moved back to a dark corner of the room.

"Who disturbs me in
my dwelling?"

"I am Yasheya, once
of this pueblo in the days of my younger being. I am Yasheya, the life taker and the stealer of
men's faces," said the old man and his eyes blazed with sudden fire.

"You are only flesh
and a taste I will soon have," said the rat thing, and his eyes opened and shut with quickening
delight. The hunger began deep in his too-long-empty belly, made his whole body quiver with
ancient, never ending blood lust.

"You have awakened
my hunger. I will dance in your skull and eat the pretty memories."

Yasheya laughed.
"Little brother of night, I will wear your blood-soaked fur for a death robe so that those in the
spirit world will know my power."

The rat moved
closer, tantalized by the feast. His teeth were long and wicked and yellowed with centuries of
such feastings in the dark.

The spider scuttled
across the floor, an eyeless, hungry sting, a shadow stalking a shadow.

Rat being eyed the
spider calmly. "I do not kill easy," said the rat. "I have necklaces, pretty necklaces of human
teeth."

"I do not die
easy," said Yasheya.

The spider danced
in a circle around rat enemy. Rat hissed, and hot sparks, vivid intervals of fire and death,
raced across the dusty floor.

Hit in the fiery
burst, the spider glowed red, fire-bright. The force pushed the spider back but seemed not to
hurt him. If
anything, spider was
fire-born, and weird life pulsed even more strongly in him.

The spider screamed
and danced and poised itself on the edge of stinging death.

"Tell me how it is
that you come to me, old man. Knowing where the bones grazed in life, makes the meal all the
sweeter."

The old man licked
his lips. His tongue was heavy and swollen with the birth of the spider. The words did not come
easily, but come they must, for it was part of his power and his enemy must know their
sting.

"In the long grass
days of youth, in this pueblo of now van­ished glory, I was the chosen one. Here, like a tree
from the center of the earth whose branches carry the sky, I was once master of the
world."

The rat being
laughed. It was a sound like knife scraping bone. "Boast not, old man. Youth does not last. Only
appetite, only hunger, my hunger, that is all that lasts."

"So you say, but
the stars fell from the sky and danced for me and the wind of life was ever at my back. The
powers of all old and terrible things, the life taste of unseen killers of night, all mine for
the asking in the below world of men."

"You think much of
yourself, old man. What was, is nothing. Now you are only that upon which I will feed. A taste of
bone and old withered flesh."

The spider leaped
at the rat like a spark shot from a green­wood fire.

The rat caught it
in its claws. Its hot tongue darted, stabbed and impaled the spider, pinning it to the floor; its
sting and death drowned in the ancient taste of graveyard dust.

It burned and
shriveled and melted on the ancient floor and the old man cried out as it and that part of him
that the spider had come from, died.

The rat pulled the
legs off and crushed the body in its yellow teeth and then spat it out, a misshapen clump of
poisoned ash, the fire of old, forever dimmed.

"I would have
destroyed you then," said Yasheya. "But I see you have forgotten nothing, that the simple tricks
are still be­yond you."

"It is useless to
even try. Your bones are mine to pick, I only
await the telling of your last tale, that last little bit of history that brings you to
me."

The old man stared
into the dark, seeing things beyond the ruined room, things of uncertain fire and misplaced
feelings.

The rat crept
across the floor, his ancient teeth longing for the pink temptation of the old man's throat. And
as he moved slowly in the last darkness of Yasheya, the old man spoke.

"I, Yasheya, not
born of men, son of rain and fire, once found in the depths of woman, brightly lighted
riverbanks, where cries of joy shot forth. I have not always said yes to woman. Yes . . . yes to
her glory and her burning desire to be the highest bird perched on the naked shoulder of
night.

"And in this, I
have found my life and lost it as well. I am here, bonepicker, the last man alive on earth,
because although darkly powerful, and in that way beyond the common needs of man, I am not
entirely without the spirit of man."

The rat moved in
the darkness.

"I have expressed
much tenderness, for one who might have been a dark spirit with mastery over life and death. I,
Yasheya, inheritor of a killing storm, instead kept my black heart carefully even and small. I
have lowered my intent red shaman's eyes beneath the inescapable stars."

"Foolish man," said
the rat. "Power bridled is no power at all. Only hunger survives."

"I had power, rat
enemy, and yet have it still, as you shall know when your lifeless body is before me, but power
was not the one great answer I sought. Seeing the easy ruin of human life about me, seeing the
useless charms they used to deflect me in my strength, then I, Yasheya, in those moments when not
even still waters dared reflect me, even I wished, as the dark night was in me, wished for the
pale view of morning that has been the eternal promise of all women born."

The rat stopped
moving, its feet in the red pool of the old man's blood. It hesitated, fascinated by the old
man's words, rapt, but ever ready for some final trick, for some hidden treach­ery.

Outside the ruined
pueblo, the air itself burned with the final darkness of mankind.

"I never trusted
men who sought themselves in women. They
are capable of anything. I should kill you now, old man, your history does not please
me." The hunger was strong in him, impatient and hard to stay.