—His vision clouded violently and he staggered, was steadied by Ruark while Bane and Stevens sealed the panel, ramming it closed with their shoulders. They spun, faces white, wearing expressions of fear that were terrible to behold in men of such stern mettle.
“Good gawd, lookit the sky,” Horn said. The moon occulted the sun and the world became a shadowy realm where every surface glowed and bloomed with a queer bluish-white light. Every living thing in the forest held its breath.
“Jaysus Mother Mary!” Ruark said, breaking the spell. “Jaysus Mother Mary Christ Almighty!”
And the men scrambled, tripped and staggered, grasping at branches to keep their footing. The eclipse lasted four minutes at most. The group reached the bottom as the moon and the sun slid apart and the world brightened by degrees. The valley was narrow and ran crookedly north and south. There were falls to the north and a small, shallow river wound its way through sandbars and intermittent stands of cottonwood and fallen spars and uprooted trunks.
A rustic village lay one hundred seventy or so yards distant upon the opposite side of the valley behind a low palisade of vertical logs—a collection of antique cottages and bungalows that extended as far as the middle heights of the terraced hillside. Several figures moved among the buildings, tending to chickens, hanging clothes. Stevens passed the scope around and it was confirmed that a handful of women were the only visible inhabitants.
Miller had marched similar villages in the European countryside where the foundations might be centuries old, perhaps dated from Medieval times. To encounter such a place here in the wilds of North America was incomprehensible. This town was wrong, utterly wrong, and the valley one of the hidden places of the world. He’d never heard a whisper of the community and only God knew why people would dwell in secret. Perhaps they belonged to a religious sect that had fled persecution and wished to follow their faith in peace. He thought of the dreadful music from the previous night, the ominous drums, the blackening sun, and was not reassured.
Away from the central portion of the community loomed a stone tower with a crenellated parapet surmounted by a turret of shiny clay shingles that narrowed to a spike. The tower rose to a height of four stories, dominating the village and was constructed of bone-white stone notched at intervals by keyhole windows. The broken ring symbol had been painted in black ochre to the left of every window and upon the great ironbound oak doors at the tower’s base. As with the symbol of the ring carved into the tree on the hillside, some combination of elements imbued the tower with menace that struck a chord deep inside Miller. His heart quickened and he looked over his shoulder at the way they’d come.
“Be dark soon,” Stevens said. He also cast a furtive backward glance. Long shadows spread over the rushes and the open ground before them. The bloody sun hung a finger’s breadth above the peaks and the sky was turning to rust. “These folks may be dangerous. Keep your guns ready.”
Horn snatched at Bane’s sleeve. “What’d y’all see back there?”
“Shut it, boy. Ain’t gonna leave this valley goin’ that direction. Nothin’ more to tell.”
“Yeah, shut it,” Ruark said and gave the kid a shove to get him moving.
∇
The company forded the river where it rushed shin deep, and moved to the village and passed through the open gate of the palisade after Stevens hailed the occupants. A dozen women of various ages paused in their chores and silently regarded the visitors. The women wore long, simple dresses of a distinctly Quaker style and dour bonnets and kerchiefs. They appeared well-fed and clean. Their teeth were white. Several of them immediately repaired to the central structure, a kind of longhouse. Most of the others went into the smaller houses. One of the younger girls smiled furtively at Miller. Obviously she was simple. Her dress was cut low and revealed her buxom curves, her belly swollen with child and Miller blushed and turned his head away. Chickens pecked in the weeds. A couple of goats wandered around, and a small pack of mutts approached, yipping and snaffling at the men’s legs.
A brawny matron with gray hair stepped forward to greet the company, and she too offered a friendly smile. “Hello, strangers. Welcome.” Her accent and mannerisms seemed off-kilter, indefinably foreign.
“Beggin’ your pardon, Ma’am.” Stevens doffed his hat, clutched it nervously. “Our apologies to intrude and all, but we’re on the trail of a couple old boys who belong to our group. We’re hopin’ you might’ve seen ’em.” His voice shook and he and Bane continued to cast worried glances over their shoulders. For his part, Miller had spent the past few minutes convincing himself he’d seen a coon or porcupine in the dead tree. Maybe a drowsing black bear.
To further distract and calm his galloping imagination, he studied the lay of the land. The houses were made of smoothed rocks and mortared stone and the windows were tiny and mostly without glass, protected from the elements by means of thick drapes and shutters. The dirt paths were grooved and hardened to iron with age. The hillside climbed steeply through trees and undergrowth, although its face was mostly rock. A cave mouth opened beneath an overhang. He’d thought perhaps some eccentric industrialist had possibly created a replica of a medieval town and transplanted its citizens, but the closer he inspected it, the more its atmosphere seeped into him, and he understood this was something far stranger.
The matron apparently observed the tension among the loggers. She said, “Dear gentlemen, ye have nothing to fear. Be at peace.”
“We’re not afraid, Missus,” Miller said. He used a gruff tone because the woman unnerved and unsettled him with her odd accent, her antiquated primness, the manner in which she cocked her head like a living doll. How the whites of her eyes were overcome by black. “But we are in a powerful hurry.”
“The men will soon return from the gathering and ye shall treat with them. Until then, please rest.” The matron waved them toward some benches near the statue of a figure in robes, two children of equally indeterminate sex crouched at its feet. The statue was defaced by weather and green mold. One grotesquely elongated hand stretched forth as if to part a curtain to reveal some dark mystery. The children’s necks were cruelly bent, tongues distended, spines humped and exposed as if flayed by a butcher’s knife. The larger figure’s dangling hand caressed their bowed heads. “Girls, see to fetching our guests pie and lemonade.” The two younger women disappeared into the longhouse, as did the one who’d smiled at Miller. They moved with the ponderous grace of soon-to-be mothers.
Miller wondered if all of the girls were with child and wished he’d paid more attention. It seemed important. He said to the matron, “How did you come to build this village? It’s not on any maps.”
“Isn’t it?” the woman said and for an instant her smile became sly as a predator of the wood. “Our hamlet is very old and was carried across the sea by our founders when Sir Raleigh still served the Queen’s pleasure. This is a place of worship, of communion and far, far from wicked civilizations of men. The nights are long in this valley. The days are gloomy. It is perfect.”
Stevens wrung his hat and fidgeted. “If you don’t mind, Ma’am, we need to locate our friends and be on our way before the sun goes down. Could you kindly point the way? Tracks show they come through here.”
“You saw them, of course,” Miller said. He decided what it was about the woman’s speech that bothered him: Her voice was hoarse, the cadences unbalanced, her intonation stilted because she wasn’t accustomed to speaking and hadn’t been for a long time.
“Aye, she seen ’em alright,” Bane said, mouth set in a grim line. “Prolly one o’ you wenches that lured em’ here.”
The matron kept smiling. Her hands trembled. “Our husbands will be home anon. Mayhap they have seen your companions.” She turned and walked into the longhouse. The door closed and then came the unmistakable clunk of a bar dropping.